


Slender Gears

by Beth, VitaLupum



Category: Creepypasta - Fandom, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Gen, Horror, Mentions of Richard's Accident, Mild Gore, Psychological Horror, child endangerment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:33:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2578442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth/pseuds/Beth, https://archiveofourown.org/users/VitaLupum/pseuds/VitaLupum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Top Gear comes to a screeching halt, Richard Hammond thinks it's bad enough he's lost his best friends. The reasons why are far, far worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It really was a gorgeous house, he reflected as he sat in the garden. It was a castle, more accurately. As James had once, a long time ago, said to him, an Englishman’s home is his castle. Although, the way he was feeling, it was becoming more and more like a prison to him. No, that wasn’t right. Perhaps an oubliette. He had been dropped in unexpectedly, and now he had been all but forgotten.

“Richard?”

He turned his head, and Mindy stood in the doorway, watching him.

“Are you coming in?” she smiled, and he shook his head, waving the bottle at her. “Don’t be too long. Willow wants to show you something she drew at school before she goes to bed.” Richard nodded, and put his head in his hands as he heard the door close behind him.

God, he was bored.

He briefly considered pulling out his phone and calling - anyone. Anyone who was prepared to go for a drink with him. The two people at the top of the list, however, were the two who were least likely to pick up - since Top Gear just… stopped, anyway.

He stared at the bright-lit blue-ish screen that was so incongruous with the gold of the sunset that lit everything behind it, and pressed a few buttons.

_James May._

James. Where was James? Last he knew he’d buggered off to Australia with Oz Clarke to discuss wine with some kangaroos or something. James had rung him beforehand - the first contact they’d had in weeks - to tell him they had to go for a drink when he got back. The tone in his voice had been pleading for his company, which Richard had to admit had warmed his heart. Next contact.

_Jeremy Clarkson._

A darker, heavier feeling made his heart sink; Jeremy. Bitterness rose within him; Jeremy fucking Clarkson. The reason the show that had defined him, defined them had come to an end. Jeremy bloody Clarkson had ended Top Gear, and with it, somehow, the trio’s friendship; it had scattered to the winds like a McDonald’s Big Mac wrapper. He had thought they were closer than this; but no. Several months later, and he was keeping up with his ‘best friends’ through whatever fell into the newspapers.

_James May._

It was tempting; maybe he could text him. What time was it in Alice Springs anyway? About… it was about twenty to six in the morning. Perhaps if he text him. Just a simple ‘are you awake?’. Nothing that would betray how painfully he needed to talk to his best friends. Friend. Singular, now, he guessed.

_Jeremy Clarkson._

On the other hand, Jeremy was in his timezone, and there was a lot to talk about, with Jeremy. _What the fuck is wrong with you_ was the question that first came to mind. Richard’s bunched fist ached a little, more psychosomatic than from any remaining pain, and he remembered the last time he had actually talked to Jeremy. The man was a clear foot taller than him, so it had simply been a matter of punching him in the jaw rather than the nose. Richard had broken a finger, but he had been willing to break both hands and Jeremy’s face. Luckily, James had grabbed him and held him back.

_James May._

_Are you awake? I want to talk - Hammond_

He realised as it sent how pathetic it sounded; he sounded like Izzy did when she texted her friends. Girls; they were best friends right up until they weren’t. How ironic. But he had sent it, and god knew he did need to talk.

_Jeremy Clarkson._

His fingers had begun to type the text before he had realised he was planning to send one; he watched as the words formed from somewhere he wasn’t sure he wanted to delve too deeply into.

_Hey mate. Well, not mate any more is it? Since you’ve become some kind of hermit and asked Francie not to talk to us any more and vanished off of the face of the earth. How are you? I’m asking because you won’t tell us, not any more. You and James have vanished out of my life - James still talks, but I’ve not seen him since I almost knocked your stupid teeth out - and you’re holed up in your house, ignoring us. I want to talk. I really want to talk. I actually want to talk, instead of dancing all over your stupid face in steel-toed cowboy boots. I want to ask you why._

His finger hovered over the send button, looking at a text that was about four times the text limit, and he would have hit it as well if his phone hadn’t begun to ring.

_James May._

“Hello?” he asked, and there was a yawn on the other end of the phone. “Sorry, mate, didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“I haven’t been to sleep, actually. I’ve just gotten back into the country and switched my phone on,” James mumbled. He sounded awful, and Richard tutted in sympathy. “If I suddenly cease conversation, assume I’ve dropped dead outside the airport waiting for the stupid little bus to take me to my car.” Richard laughed a little, at that, and he thought he heard James give a little chuckle as well. “Anyway, you said you wanted to talk.”

“Yeah, yeah.” And suddenly, he had literally nothing to say. “I… I was…”

“You’re bored.”

Richard blinked, and then furrowed his brow. He was, but in very much of a meta sense. He was not bored with just his current situation - suddenly, he had been left with nothing more than _Crash Course_ , and everything was boring.

“I…”

“You’re bored. You’re irritated with Jeremy. You’re completely baffled by the events of the last few months. You’ve possibly tried calling Jeremy first and couldn’t get through.” There was the faintest inkling of bitterness in James’ voice on that last point, and Richard knew why. Once, Jeremy would have been the first he’d have called.

“Wrong on one count,” he said, and he could almost see James smile a little. Just a little.

“Well, Hammond, to tell you the truth… so am I. And, I apologise, but I did try calling Jeremy first.” Richard nodded. Of course. “The phone didn’t even ring. It beeped. I think-” James went silent for a moment, and Richard found his mouth had dropped open a little bit at the implications. “-I think he’s cancelled his SIM card. He’s changed his number.”

“He’s changed his number?” Richard said, and suddenly felt a wave of sadness blossom from somewhere in his throat, solidifying around his vocal chords like jagged stone. “I-I…”

“Richard,” James said, and against all the odds sounded just as pained as Richard felt. “I… look, the sodding bus is here, but… drop in tomorrow. No, I’ll come… sod it. We’ll talk tomorrow.” Richard barely had time to say goodbye before he was hung up on, and looked at his phone. His text to Jeremy’s now defunct number stared back at him.

He deleted it, and felt the tears he would never have dared shed on the phone to James flow down his face, letting his head fall into his arms.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day when Richard awoke, he was even more fidgety than normal, bothering Mindy until he thought she might kick him out, at which point he sent a text to James with the name of the pub he was going to, telling him to meet him there.

When James actually showed up, Richard had put away two pints of lager and was taking a sip of his third, wiping away the foam head from his upper lip. He wasn't keeping as alert a watch as he had been earlier and when he saw James, making his way to him, he sputtered on his drink for a moment before standing and meeting James to shake his hand, clapping him on the back.

"So how was your trip?" Richard asked, for lack of anything else to say. He'd doodled on his napkins waiting for James and the condensation from the glass had wetted the pictures, causing them to smear. It was disappointing for some reason, and it felt oddly in sync for how this situation had played out, the degradation of the drawings similar to how his friendships with James and Jeremy had smudged and faded.

James merely shrugged and after a moment replied, “Alright.”

Richard blinked, uncertain as to what to say, and finally came up with “I suppose you don’t want to see another bottle of wine for a year or so?” He had hoped that he might earn a small smile from James, but James instead just nodded and briefly ‘mm’d at Richard. He seemed … older. His face looked tired, worn. Or maybe Richard had just forgotten that was there before, seeing James every day and laughing; the dull ache of recognition returned as he remembered again how he missed it.

The smaller man shifted in his seat, uncomfortable and looked outside. There was a man in a black suit, tall and obscured of detail by the bullseye glass on the front windows. Richard wondered if he was coming for a late lunch. He glanced at the clock, craning his neck to see it. Half past two.

He turned back to James and disregarded the man he’d seen, instead trying again to coax James out of his closed response. It frustrated him, that James had been the one to suggest going for a drink before he left and now James was closed off to him. He already missed Jeremy too much and he didn’t want James to drop out of his life too.

“So, uh... how’s Sarah? Was she happy to see you? I mean, I’m sure you talked to her but she still must have been... lonely.” Richard’s voice sounded stilted; this wasn’t quite the conversation he wanted to have, but he had to start somewhere. James looked at him, and then leant back in the chair.

“Sarah’s fine.” His voice was quiet, cautious; Richard could hear a little of the old James for a moment. The old James. “And Mindy?”

“Yes, she’s fine. Ah, the girls are growing up fast,” Richard said, and a small smile crossed James’ face. “Izzy’s a total handful, you know. Turned thirteen a few weeks ago, and now she thinks she knows everything.” James snorted, and Richard finally felt maybe he’d cracked his shell. “What about you?”

“To be honest, I’m still completely knackered from that trip,” James said, after a moment of staring at Richard’s doodles on the napkin. “Oz left his car at my place and the car ride back - both of us sleep-deprived, might I add - was absolutely excruciating.” Richard laughed out loud, and he almost sensed James relaxing as he did so. “Sarah’s gone out of town for a few days, which is wonderful timing on her part-” He sighed there, and leant forward, leaning on his elbows. Richard looked him over again. He really did look exhausted. “I almost called to cancel, to tell you God’s honest truth.” That stung a little; Richard looked away, back out of the bullseye window. The man outside had gone; probably got mates to go and see, Richard thought bitterly. “But I didn’t,” James added quietly.

“You look absolutely shattered,” Richard said, choosing his words carefully for once. He was being literal as well. James looked almost fragile; as if, when Richard inevitably broached the subject James had too much tact to approach, he was going to shatter into a thousand pieces.

“I don’t understand it, Hammond,” James said, sounding miserably confused - the first time his voice had changed from emotionless monotone. Then he cleared his throat, and just like that his blue eyes sharpened up and he looked up at Richard again, smile still a little weak.

“I do. You’re getting old, mate,” Richard said, trying to instigate some banter; but James just averted his eyes, smile fading, and Richard reached out, clapping him on the shoulder. “You were born old.” He paused, and then decided to throw caution to the winds. “I missed you.”

“Oh, don’t be such a woman,” James said, smile returning for a moment. “I missed you too.” And then, it seemed, the dam was broken and all James’ saved up words spilled out. “I spent a month trying to figure out which one of you I should side with. Not that I needed to figure anything out. When I tried to hold you back, it was so you didn’t get yourself flattened by someone a foot taller than you. Not the first time, either.” He stopped for a moment for a swig of beer, and then continued, as if somehow terrified that, should Richard interrupt, he would lose the words forever. “Not so you wouldn’t hurt that stupid great idiot. But you had Mindy, and the kids, and you and Jeremy...” He took a deep breath. “You two were always much... closer than him and myself. I assumed you two would make it up and I’d find myself somewhat extraneous.” His hand was shaking. Richard watched in horrified fascination as more words than he’d ever thought possible to come from the man’s mouth spilled forth. “But I was always on the brink of contacting you, when suddenly something would get in the way.”

“James, it’s... you don’t have to explain, mate,” Richard said hurriedly. “I...” James had summed it up pretty well; he didn’t know what to say next. If he wasn’t Richard Hammond, and the other man wasn’t James May, they’d probably have hugged by now, but that wasn’t how they did things. “Can we talk? About Jeremy?”

“What is there to talk about? Great lummox threw away the best thing the three of us ever had, and now we’re sitting in a pub like we’re on some kind of bloody date,” James said gloomily. The rant, rather than taking it out of him, had seemed to pep him up a little, some colour back in his cheeks - it was either that, or the pint he had now finished.

“Listen, there’s something... not right with him, yes?” Richard said, and James nodded. “Maybe Andy knows something. Let’s face it, we’re not the most observant blokes, are we?”

“Speak for yourself, Hammond,” James said, a little acerbically. “Call him, then. Maybe we can find something out.” Richard nodded. “Has you been able to talk to Francie at all?”

“Yes, she answered the phone once. All she said was, and I quote ‘Jeremy doesn’t want me talking to you’. She sounded sorry, if that means anything,” Richard said flatly. “What the hell is going on, James?”

“I wish I could tell you,” James said quietly, staring at the bullseye window across the room. “I wish I could.”

* * *

They’d sat there, small-talking for a bit, and after about another hour and a half, Richard had decided that it was probably time to get back home to Mindy and his kids, and James had seemed almost a little glad to be able to escape the stunted conversation.

As they’d stood and collected themselves, Richard had paused and placed his hand on James’s shoulder for a moment, squeezing lightly. James turned to look at him and Richard offered a small smile, that he hoped had said ‘you’re not extraneous’. James hadn’t looked any better for it.

Later that night, Richard sat in his front room. If he spent any more of his time drinking beer, he was in real danger of becoming an alcoholic, he reflected. Well, at least an addiction would fill in some time. He crumpled the empty can of Stella in his hands, and then dropped it on the floor. He immediately realised what Mindy’s reaction would be if she hadn’t already gone to bed, and sheepishly got to his feet to pick it up and drop it in the bin in the kitchen. Doing so took him within a few feet of the telephone, which he stared at for a while. Surely Andy wouldn’t mind a chat, the alcohol his brain was swimming in reassured him, and so he reached out and picked up the receiver.

The alcohol had also stopped him from noticing the time - it was late enough that when Andy picked up, his voice sounded thick with sleep and like his brain was stuck a couple hours back, not working.

“H’lo,” Andy mumbled and Richard turned to look at the clock. Christ, it was ten past one. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“Hey, Andy. Sorry, did I wake you?” Realising a second later that, at ten past one in the morning, this may have been the case, he heard Andy mutter something under his breath. “I was just thinking,” he said as confidently as he could. It just came off as loud. “Did you notice Jeremy acting a bit odd as the series ended?” Dumb question - everybody could have seen it. But if someone would back his and James’ theories up, that would be nice. “And do you have any idea why?” he added as he heard rustling, which must have been Andy sitting up. He picked up an empty picture frame from the table. Odd… he could’ve sworn there had been a picture of Willow in there. There was a yawn and then Andy must have gotten up, because he heard a door creak open. A minute later, Andy replied, and Richard was grateful. Nobody but Andy would humour him at one in the morning over something so trivial.

“Hammond, I’m glad to see you’ve become a total pisshead since you vanished.” Richard grinned, not entirely sure if it was a compliment or an insult. “To answer your completely mental question, I don’t know why, no, but he was acting weird, I agree. During recording, he was filming himself with his own little crappy Sony thing. If it hadn’t been one of you three, I’d’ve stopped him, but...” Richard was struck by drunken inspiration.

“You wouldn’t happen to have the tapes from the last series, would you?” the small man asked. “Y’know, that I could borrow and watch? Just to see when it got really bad? He hasn’t spoken to us in weeks - months, really. He’s telling Francie not to let James contact her and changed his number.” Oops, maybe an overspill of personal information there.

Andy sighed. “Can you promise you won’t destroy them? There’s a reason we have the footage archived.” Richard beamed widely. “Like I say, if it wasn’t one of you three...”

“Of course, mate. When’s the last time you saw me destroy-” His brain rewound back to every single special they had ever done, and he changed course, “-any tapes? I’ll take care of ‘em like they were my kids.” Well, an exaggeration, but Andy seemed to have bought it. Negotiations continued for a few minutes, and then he replaced the phone back on the cradle, and smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

"So what are we watching?” Mindy asked curiously, and Richard smiled brightly at her. He wondered if he should tell her what he was looking for, and then decided against it. She could be like a control group; if he didn’t tell her what to look for, her seeing something meant it was definitely there.

“Just some old footage from the last series. I was feeling a bit... nostalgic,” he said, sounding almost apologetic, and she smiled gently.

“I know how it felt for you when Top Gear finished,” she said, her voice soft and soothing, and he looked down at the floor. No, she didn’t, but she genuinely cared. “Rich, I’m sorry about what Jeremy did.” He leant over, pecking her on the cheek, and smiled.

“I love you, Mindy.”

“Come on,” she smiled, not even needing to respond, and grabbed the remote. “Let’s watch you messing about behind the scenes. I assume that’s what this is?”

Several hours later, and the footage had been disappointingly ordinary; Jeremy was a little more stand-offish and rude; James seemed a little more tired, even back then; and Richard could see the nervous tension in his own face. How had he not noticed when it had begun? But there was moments of laughter, as well; moments where the three of them were just three blokes pratting about in expensive cars, and it made him smile.

“God, it’s three. I’ll pick up Izzy and Willow,” Mindy said, standing up, and she pecked him on the forehead. “Remember, you need to call the vet about Fudgesicle, remember.” Richard nodded, and then looked up at her incredulously.

“Fudgesicle?”

“You told me I should let Willow name the new horse,” Mindy said calmly. “So I did.” Richard shook his head, and turned back to the television. “Love you.”

“Love you,” he said absently. As she left, the door slammed shut, and the picture on the television jumped a little. “Oh... crap,” he sighed, and thumped the top of the tape player. The image reeled wildly, snow filling the screen for a moment, and he sighed, turning it off. He’d continue this later.

* * *

James, meanwhile, was sitting in his house, alone. A cup of tea sat, cold and unheeded, on the table before him, and as he sat, fingers tapping against the wood, a Schumann concerto drifting in through the still air from the living room, his eyes glanced nervously at the window.

_Damn it, Hammond!_

Why couldn’t Richard just leave this alone? Hadn’t they all been hurt enough, hadn’t the last few months been hard enough? Why, oh why, had he had to put the idea of talking to Andy in Richard’s head? Three days ago, Andy had called him to tell him he was sending Richard the footage of the last series - did he want a copy too? he had asked, sounding tired, and James had laughed. Very falsely. But that was Richard, through and through.

Since returning from Australia, plus a tan and minus the motivation to leave the house, his mind had been returning to the final series of filming with greater and greater regularity. There had been a moment in Australia, his brain didn’t quite recall the details, where he had been suddenly immersed in the feeling that had permeated the entirety of the last series; a cold feeling of anxiety, as if he were drowning in ice water. The inability to get back to the surface, to even communicate that the water was too deep, but nevertheless the feeling of drowning. He supposed it was caused by the knowledge that his best friends were slowly drifting in two different directions, pulling him along with them as if he were a toy and they were petulant toddlers. He sometimes wished he were two different people.

Somewhere behind him the clock ticked, and he lifted the cup to his lips, taking a sip and grimacing as the coolness of the liquid registered. Maybe he could go to Jeremy’s house and try to see him...

When had the other man’s name stopped being Jezza in his mind, and started being Jeremy?

Remembering something, he reached into his pocket, pulling out the napkin Richard had been doodling on; he had used it to clean some condensation from the underneath of his glass and had placed it into his pocket distractedly, not even realising until he had been searching for his keys upon arriving home. The scribbles were blurred, but there had been something about them that had made him keep the paper. Something he recognised. It was a circle with two crosses in; a rudimentary face with crosses for eyes the most obvious explanation.

He scrunched it back up, shoving it deep in his pocket, and put his head in his hands.

* * *

Richard was more than eager to jump back into watching the tapes as soon as he could get the chance the next day, and as he watched he began to notice more and more, seeing as every episode passed that Jeremy had been getting more taut in his expression, less inclined to laugh, more often snapping at something they said. And he had looked jittery - eyes flickering around the room more than normal.

He was taking the occasional nip of a can of Sprite when he saw the first truly out-of-character moment from the rambunctious presenter - Jeremy visibly jumped as the camera panned across the room. Richard fumbled for the remote, and rewound the tape, tussling with it for a moment before finding the button that let him play it in slow motion. There was a momentary glitch in the footage as it passed over an area of the crowd, the picture snowy and then bursting colours, as if someone had passed a magnet too close to the tape. He sighed, wondering if Andy had ever heard of the wonder of SD cards. All the tapes were only the backups, he supposed.

As the viewer panned across slowly, he noticed that in the very back of the crowd there was a shadowy area where a few people stood - one of them dressed far too fancy for a recording of Top Gear. He appeared to be clad in - Richard leant forward, squinting - a black suit. He couldn’t quite make out his face, deep in the shadows, and then when the camera panned back, he was gone.

Maybe he was an executive, coming to talk to the producers about something, and he had just stepped in to watch the filming. Maybe he’d even accidentally stepped into shot, Richard mused, and had been dragged back by a member of the team. That would explain his mysterious disappearance. Something in his gut felt like there had been something... off about the figure, but he put it down to coincidence - the tape had merely buggered up at the same time as it had panned over the man. However, no harm in a little investigation. Most of the bloody executives were probably sent directly from Hell anyway, he thought sarcastically, a smug smile crossing his face.

He began to fast-forward through the remainder of the tape - it would take forever to find out otherwise, most of it crap footage of the audience or a few seconds of James clearing his throat. He had never appreciated just how tough the editing team truly had it, and how much complete bollocks truly ended up on the cutting room floor. When he saw nothing else of note on that tape, he stopped and reassessed his entire strategy. This was going to take forever unless he found something relevant... and then came the lightbulb moment. He leapt up, ripping open the bags until he found the carrier bag that Andy had given him, with a half-related anecdote as a warning; Jeremy had left some of his hand-held camera’s tapes at the studio and Andy had gathered them up before the show had ended in case Jeremy had asked for them back. He hadn’t, and so now they were in Richard’s hands... with just one problem.

He couldn’t play the tapes in the VCR; they needed to be transferred to the correct format, or played on the same camera. Obviously, he didn’t have the same camera as Jeremy, so he’d have to get one and either watch it on there or figure out how to port it to a PC so he didn’t have to watch it on a screen the size of his palm. Sighing, he grabbed his phone and opened the web browser, wondering idly if Izzy would be able to help. The kids were always better at newfangled techy stuff, even if he did pride himself on being more technology-centric than James or Jeremy, who both seemed to be stuck in the age where a computer was the size of a room and took a week to boot up.

It took a bit of work and some splashing out - Jeremy had, in fact, gotten a very good camera, even if it was directly from the Stone Age - but once he had returned home and it was loaded, he was relieved to find the quality was pretty pristine. The volume was low, but he could make out a bizarre rattling buzzing noise, not unlike static, underneath the main audio, overlaid with Jeremy’s quiet breathing as he went through what was unmistakably his own house in total darkness. It was early morning at a guess, only the faintest light shining in through the windows, just enough to let Richard make out vague shapes.

The tape cut off suddenly, Richard blinking in surprise, and then came back on. It was probably a few hours later - the morning light illuminating the rooms, with that bright and faint golden glow that faded by early afternoon, a subdued hue that was still beautifully bright to behold on all the surfaces it touched.

Jeremy turned slowly towards the door, and, for one moment, Richard swore he could see the black-suited man again. Had Jeremy been meeting up with some network executive? A funny and yet slightly nauseating thought crossed his mind; had he been having some kind of affair with someone? Was this video footage some weird attempt at recording their time together? It would explain quite a few things, but it raised infinitely more questions that Richard didn’t think were going to get answered anytime soon, so he pushed it to the back of his mind.

The tape ended abruptly there, barely used, and so he picked out another one, cursing the fact that the great daft bastard hadn’t put a date on any of them. This was started very obviously in Jeremy’s living room, once more in the middle of the night.

The initial five minutes of footage were of Jeremy’s right foot, which Richard found extremely uninteresting and thus fast-forwarded through. Hence, he almost missed the moment where Jeremy snatched up the camera and proceeded to charge through the house like a bull elephant, which Richard supposed Jeremy could be likened to. He could not work out the source of Jeremy’s sudden activity, but he had the feeling that it was not going to be good, and as if on cue the lights all went out leaving Jeremy in near-total darkness. The camera barely had the option to rewind, never mind night vision, so the image immediately went almost completely dark, and he was left staring at the basic outline of what appeared to be a doorway, which was beginning to swing open. The image on the screen began to roll, and in between the sparks of static and the wild colours that were beginning to flicker around the edges of what he could see, he saw... someone. The tall man.

A shiver ran down his spine, and he sat back, pausing the image on the computer screen. As it continued to flicker, even when paused, he reached out and touched his fingers to the image.

“Who are you?”


	4. Chapter 4

James, however, was trying to go about his day in as normal a fashion as he could remember. Luckily, his life hadn’t really changed very much - he got up, wondered where Fusker was, remembered the deranged moggy had been dead for a while now, still subconsciously tried to avoid tripping over it on the stairs, had breakfast, and then figured out something to do for the rest of the day. On days where he was filming for various programs or for _Headsqueeze_ , it was much easier to fill the hours, and of course had Sarah been there, she would be full of ideas.

Today, however, he was completely free, and thus was contemplating what to do when the doorbell rang frantically. His first thought was Jeremy; perhaps he’d come to his senses, come round to try and make amends. His second thought was Richard; maybe he’d given up on the foolish quest to discover what had happened to Jeremy and was waiting for him to explain it himself.

He certainly wasn’t expecting Francie Clarkson to fall through the door into his arms.

He staggered back and ended up nearly falling on his arse, still clutching the near-unconscious woman in his arms, and as soon as he’d caught up with the situation he carried her into the living room and  laid her head down gently on the sofa, before remembering his manners and finding a pillow to put under her head. His front door still hung open, and he rushed to it and glanced outside to see - nobody. His heart sank with disappointment for a moment, and then his attention returned to the unconscious woman on his couch.

“Francie,” he said gently but urgently, trying to remember how to wake somebody up from - oh, he didn’t even know how she’d passed out. Had she fainted? She definitely hadn’t hit her head. His hands felt her face - she was clammy. Was she ill? - and then, out of slight terror and the need to be doing something, felt for a pulse. She was definitely alive - idiot, he could see her breathing, of course she was alive. Elevating her legs, that’s what he had to do - he placed another pillow under her legs, and then, utterly at a loss, shook her as gently as he could. How insane that, a few minutes ago, there had not been an unconscious lady in his house.

“Francie?”

Her eyelids fluttered, and she sat up, James kneeling next to the sofa as she did so.

“James?” Her voice was hollow and empty and nothing like the Frances Clarkson he knew, and looking at her pale face and the bags under her eyes, he knew that something had gone very wrong. “Where am I?”

“You’re at my house,” he said gently, and she looked around. He saw her shoulders slump as some unknown tension left them. “Are you alright?” He was sure he was meant to get her a cup of   sweet tea or something - or was that shock? Was she in shock? He remembered the British adage  ‘everything up to and including decapitation can be solved with a cuppa’ and, with a murmured promise to return as quickly as he could, made two cups of tea with so much sugar the spoon would probably remain vertical in the cup if let go, and brought them in, sitting next to the woman who was now glancing around nervously.

“Thank you,” she whispered, taking a gulp of the tea, and he looked at her again. It couldn’t be anything to do with Jeremy. Francie Clarkson wouldn’t run from her husband, the man she’d thrown out of their house for daring to look at other women. Surely...

“What happened?” James asked, still taking as much care as he could to be as gentle as he could. Francie looked at him, brown eyes dark and hollow, and took another gulp of the tea. “Francie, what happened to you?”

“I’m leaving,” she said quietly, and James stared at her for a moment. “I have to get out of that house, James.” James waited patiently for her to continue, but she just sat in silence for a few seconds, and it took a verbal prompt in order to get her to continue. “Katya and Finlo are with Emily. I’m going to join them later. If Jeremy calls you...” Her eyes filled with tears, and he uncomfortably wished that Richard was here to help him.

“What did he do?” he asked quietly, and her eyes narrowed, knuckles turning white as she gripped onto the cup. The tea must’ve been working. “Francie, what’s going on?”

“You can ask him,” she snapped, placing the mug down on the coffee table. James automatically lifted the cup and placed a coaster underneath it. “He’s gone insane, James. Absolutely insane, and I won’t have him around my children.” Tears were still flooding down her face, but her voice was steely. “You know... I never thought I’d have Jeremy Clarkson chase me out of my own house.” She hiccuped, and then her brown eyes, which were now filled with fire, locked onto James’. “But I’m not putting my children in danger.”

“What the bloody hell did he do?” James asked, now completely aghast. Had Jeremy really gone mad? Had he genuinely lost his mind during the last series? A stab of guilt went through him. How had he not noticed? Had he let Francie and the kids get hurt by standing idly by?

“It doesn’t matter. You won’t believe me anyway,” Francie said quietly. “But you can ask him, when he comes creeping back to you. Which he will.” She stood up. “I’m sorry, but I needed to tell somebody I was leaving, and you were the first person I thought of.” James nodded, standing up with her, and as she walked to the door, James couldn’t help but reach out and grab her sleeve.

“Francie...” he said, and Francie turned to him. “Are you going to be alright? You have my number, don’t you?” She turned to him, and suddenly clutched both of his hands, bringing them together in her own as if begging him.

“Don’t go to that house,” she said, impulsively. “Wait until he comes to you, but do not go to that house.” James stared at her as she let go and fled to her car in the rain that had started sometime whilst they had been inside. He didn’t close the door and return back inside until she had been gone for quite some time. He was very surprised to find it was hardly even lunchtime.

* * *

“She said what?” Richard said, leaning against the counter. Mindy had reasoned that at thirteen, a bona fide teenager, Izzy should be learning how to cook for herself. Izzy, having the idea that at thirteen she should be on her computer talking to her friends 24/7, was angrily standing next to her mother, glaring at the pasta with such vicious hatred Richard wasn’t sure if he was going to drop dead if he ate it. Willow, having been offered the chance to join in, had refused, and was sitting at the table drawing furiously.

“She told me ‘not to go to that house’.” James sounded baffled, and Richard couldn’t blame him. This didn’t sound like the last time Francie and Jeremy had fought. Francie had come out snarling. “You don’t think-” His voice trailed off, and Richard put his head in his hands. He couldn’t imagine Jeremy ever physically hurting Francie - for all his wandering eyes and hands, he genuinely adored the woman.

“Listen, I think we should go anyway. Listen, if he’s there, alone, and psychotic, he... I don’t know, he might hurt himself,” Richard said, and Mindy threw him an intrigued yet worried glance. Izzy took advantage of the momentary lapse of her mother’s interest to take her phone out. “When shall we go?”

“Hammond, shouldn’t we call... I don’t know, the police? I’m sure Francie would have called somebody anyway if she was in danger, but...” James sounded far from convinced, but his caution was well-placed.

“We’ll go and scout out the place this evening. If we see anything... weird... we’ll call the police,” Richard said, and saw, uncomfortably, that Mindy was staring directly at him. Izzy was looking up at him as well. “Listen, can we have this conversation a bit later, mate?”

“Of course. May out.” James hung up, and Richard hung up as well, turning to face the barrage of questions that he assumed would be coming. But Izzy had already lost interest, probably texting some - some boy or something. Mindy, however, gave him a look that he immediately understood, in that special body language partners develop between themselves - we will talk about what I half-heard later.

“Dad, I’m drawing this picture for you,” Willow said, not taking her eyes from the paper.

“Er, can I see?” Richard said, trying to move past Mindy without meeting her eyes. She would talk him out of it, he knew. She’d talked him out of the tapes, after all. He wasn’t going to give her the chance.

“No. I’ll give it to you later,” Willow said placidly, and covered it over. “It’s a surprise.”

“Richard, parental meeting in the den?” Mindy said sharply, and Richard winced.

“Dad’s in trouble,” Izzy said sullenly. “That just means you want to shout at him.” Mindy looked at her eldest daughter and plucked the mobile phone from her hands. “Wha- Mum!”

“Young lady, if you’ve been paying attention enough to know how, you can finish cooking the pasta,” Mindy said sharply. “Richard, into the den. Now.” Richard followed Mindy guiltily into the room that was now stacked on one side with tapes, and she smacked him sharply on the arm with the wooden spoon she held - not enough to hurt, just enough to let out a little frustration.

“Ow!”

“Richard, you told me you were giving this up,” she said warningly, and Richard shrugged.

“Mindy, Jeremy might be alone in that house, he might have gone completely mental,” he said desperately, and Mindy glared at him. “Listen, Francie went to visit James the other day...” He related the story, and by the end of it Mindy was completely dumbstruck. not to mention horrified. “So I have to check.”

“Richard, please, just call the police or something,” Mindy said, and it sounded as if she were pleading now. “Rich, if you go and you get hurt...” He looked into her eyes, and the pain he saw made him feel - it made him feel a little angry, and he wasn’t sure why. It made him feel guilty, he supposed, and he did not like being made to feel guilty.

“Mindy, Jeremy is my best friend. Well, one of two.” He was trying to keep his voice level and failing, a note of irritation creeping in unbidden. She was just worried about him. He knew that. Right? “I have to make sure that he’s alright.” She shook her head, completely brushing off what he just said as if he had never said it, and he opened his mouth in disbelief. “Mindy, is this some kind of...”

“I am not losing you. Not again. I let you go back and I let you speed around a track in fast cars after you almost died...” she hissed, and Richard immediately felt a cloud of anger overcome him. So that’s what this was about? So long after the fact?

“You _let_ me? Do you think I’m not a grown man who can make my own decisions? What happened was a freak accident, Mindy, and you know I...” he snapped, and she squared up to him immediately, eyes narrowed.

“Yes, but it happened and it happened to you, my husband, the man I love, the father of my two children and just as I finally get to have you to myself a little, not gallivanting off around the country...” She was shaking. She was actually shaking, her small frame filled with emotions too big for it. Richard, had he not been blinded by rage, would probably have been rather afraid.

“Are you accusing me of not spending time with you and the kids? How dare you accuse me of not spending time with the kids...” he hissed. “My children are the most precious things to me in the entire world, Mindy, and you are second, you know that...”

"This is not the point I was trying to make, the point I was trying to make was that you want to go running off with Jeremy Clarkson and James May whenever I finally feel like I might have a bit of time with you, and this time it’s not just to prat around in fast cars. This time, you might get seriously hurt. Again. And this time... you know that,” Mindy said bitterly, and Richard realised that they were both almost nose to nose. Thankfully, they had not been shouting, but there was no doubt that if Izzy had left the door open she would have heard them.

"Mindy, it’s not like that,” he said, frustratedly, and she looked at him. It was, though. Wasn’t it?


	5. Chapter 5

Richard sat in his Fiat, waiting for James to call him back. It was beginning to get dark, but he would rather be sat out here, listening to the insect life around his house, than sat inside with Mindy glaring at him. Dinner had been acrimonious and somewhat burnt due to Izzy’s lacklustre attention span and, of course, inexperience at cooking, and when Mindy’s glares had finally gotten too much, he had run outside to the car. Now he was sat in a car at six p.m. as the summer day slowly died, listening to the birds that were still gathered, in the early evening sun, around the ornamental lake.

Lakes in stillness will take every life of the night.

The thought slid, unbidden, into his mind like a glacier, and out of habit he glanced at the pond, watching its surface. He knew it was full of fish, koi carp, a few catfish that he and Mindy had bought, specifically, but the surface seemed unusually smooth. It was summer and the surface of the pond was alive with mayflies - normally the clop of a fish taking its next meal interrupted his thoughts every few seconds.

He narrowed his eyes. Under the tree, shielded by the still-bright early evening sun and the shade of the branches in some kind of chiaroscuro camouflage, there seemed to be a-

Someone banged on the window and he gasped in fright, turning to see Willow stood next to the door. He opened it, and she climbed in, sitting on his knee.

“Hello, darlin’,” he muttered, suddenly feeling a wave of cold fear slide over him. Jeremy had lost his children due to - whatever. He was about to find out, he guessed. How would he have coped with losing his girls?

“I drew you this picture,” Willow said, handing him a rolled-up piece of dark blue paper. “It’s a surprise. I kicked Izzy for trying to look at it.” She looked inordinately pleased with herself. “She wouldn’t let me borrow her makeup. Can you shout at her?” Richard shook his head, and as his phone rang he shoved the picture onto the dashboard, still rolled up.

“Go on, Willow. I’ve got to go.”

“Are you going to go and beat up Izzy’s boyfriend?” Willow asked chirpily, before skipping off. Richard blinked at this new piece of information, before filing it in the ‘talk to Mindy’ section of his brain and answering the phone.

“Hammond? May.”

“Alright, mate. Can we make this quick? Well, as quick as an hour and a half’s drive either way can be,” Richard said, sighing. “Mindy’s pretty angry.”

“What on earth about?” James asked, sounding bewildered, and Richard sighed. “Women. They never want you running about after your potentially-psychopath best mate, do they.” Richard rolled his eyes, and suddenly James’ voice was serious. “We... we could always call the police.”

“I think we owe it to him to see if he’s there,” Richard said slowly, wondering if he himself meant ‘there’ as in in the house or in his right mind. He wasn’t sure, now it came to it. “I think we need to try and talk him round, mate.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. Let’s get going then. At this rate, we could be back by tomorrow morning,” James said, dryly.

* * *

Arriving at Jeremy’s house at around eight p.m., the light had begun to leach, however slowly, from the summer sky, and Richard stared at the large house. He could hardly call it ostentatious when he lived in a castle, but it was definitely a summary of Jeremy’s personality. And right now, it was as dark as the inside of a coffin and about as lively.

James was probably going to be at least another half-an-hour, and Richard got out to see if there was any sign of life. No lights shone in the windows, save the summer sun glinting off of objects within. He felt suddenly nervous, and turned, leaning back into his car. He was going to get in trouble with Mindy if she found out, but... ah-hah. He fished out the packet of cigarettes from under the seat, and put one in his mouth; surely this was a situation that merited a break in the rules of smoking. He felt a momentary pang of guilt; he had broken the pact he had with himself not to drink, promising he would not smoke. Perhaps if he didn’t drink for the next few months... yeah, that’d do it. He found the lighter in the glove compartment and sparked up, strolling closer to the house as he did so.

Bad move.

The entire building, which had always been warm and welcoming and promising of beer and companionship and normally a lot of good-natured shouting, was suddenly a dark husk looming above him with a multitude of insectoid eyes that reflected him - tiny, insignificant him. The thought gave him the shivers, and he backed away, happy that nobody was here to see his display of unmanliness.

Fifteen minutes passed like treacle through filter paper, and eventually James pulled up in his Panda, muttering something about traffic. He looked very unwell, Richard thought, and mentioned as much as James made to stride towards the entrance.

“What?” James said, glaring at him, and Richard stepped back.

“James, you look like you haven’t slept since you got back from Australia. Or... ever,” he added, and James’ expression switched to confusion after taking a brief detour through rage and curiosity. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes, Hammond,” James snapped. “I don’t normally drive for almost two hours to look at a house unless I’m buying it or it’s really interesting.” Fair enough, Richard thought. “Let’s just... let’s go.”

They tried the front door, and when it swung inward freely, Richard shot James a warning glance. James shrugged helplessly, and they edged inside, eyes sweeping from side to side.

“Jeremy?” Richard called, his voice sounding desperately weak and reedy in the musty, dank air of the house. It smelled like a house that hadn’t been aired in weeks, which was... unnerving, with an extra bitter edge he couldn’t quite identify, and all of the curtains were firmly pulled shut, leaving the house in a state of malaise that put the two men on edge.

“We definitely have to call the police,” James murmured, his angry edge disappearing as the front door creaked shut, sealing them in the sepulchre-esque gloom. “Richard, is there anything heavy you can pick up and hit, say, a lunatic robber with?”

“You?” Richard suggested, and James snorted with laughter. “Don’t laugh, mate, we’re going to die, that’ll be really undignified...” But he laughed a little, too, which almost helped break the spell the house had weaved over them in seconds. Almost.

“Jeremy?” James called, looking up the stairs. “Richard, there’s something... horrible about this.” Richard knew why he had used that word; he didn’t know why, but he knew that ‘horrible’ was the only word to describe the place, the situation. “You don’t... what do you think...?” He stopped talking, and began to ascend the stairs slowly, before stopping as the stair gave a loud, pained creak. “Shall we check down here first?”

“Yeah. Let’s head for the kitchen,” Richard suggested, and together they made their way into the cavernous kitchen that was usually bubbling with life.

It was almost ruined, the table upended and a drawer full of cutlery spread across the room amidst shards of crockery and crumpled paper. James headed for the fridge and pulled it open, immediately pulled his sleeve across his face to brace himself against the stench.

“Jesus, Hammond,” he said in wonder, although with his nose pinched by his fabric-covered hand it came out as ‘Desus, Habbond’. “It’s all... it’s all rotten.” Richard walked to his side, and stared in at the kind of fridge he would expect to see Kim and Aggie cleaning out. There was blue fur on some of the food, and green slime on others. He had never seen green milk before, and never wanted to again. “But... but Francie only left this morning... what on Earth have they been...” James continued the sentence with silently-mouthed words of horror, and Richard sat on one of the few remaining chairs that had not been broken or thrown about.

“Jeremy’s in really serious trouble, isn’t he?” he said weakly, and James nodded, leaning against one of the counters. “What’s happened?”

“Well, he was extremely good at making enemies,” James said quietly, eyes fixed on a shelf at head height that had survived the onslaught its mate - now lying in the sink - had not. “Perhaps he made... well, an enemy who couldn’t be bought off by the BBC weakly kissing their arse?”

“But look at this place, James. What... I mean, would Francie have let the food rot?” Richard said pointedly, and James shook his head, still staring at the shelf. “But it can’t have just... gone off today...”

“Hammond, come here,” James said quietly, and Richard stepped up beside him, looking over his shoulder. “What’s this?” He reached out, and touched the shelf lightly, and Richard squinted to see better in the gloom.

Something black and smooth was charred onto the shelf, a lump of melted plastic that had dripped from the shelf onto the counter below, leaving a burned hole in both the shelf and the counter. The bitter smell he had not been able to place had been the smell of burning plastic, and he looked at James.

“It’s cold. Probably just set on fire and left there,” James said quietly, and Richard tried to pry it from the wood. Eventually, with a bit of brute force, it ripped off, taking a chunk of the shelf with it. “What on earth is it?”

“I don’t know. A remote control maybe? No, maybe a... I have no idea,” Richard said quietly, and dropped it to the floor, where it bounced, very slightly, and then sat. “Let’s try upstairs.” The bitter, musty smell had intensified, and cold beads of sweat were beginning to run down his back. James looked similarly uncomfortable, and as they walked through the trashed house a sound above them made James jump violently and clutch onto Richard’s sleeve.

“Someone’s upstairs,” he said in a low voice, and Richard nodded, staring at the ceiling. “Richard, let’s just go.”

“James, what if he’s hurt himself or something?” Richard said quietly, and James looked at him pleadingly. “James Daniel May, we are going and we are... we’re saving our best friend from himself. Like always.”

There was a moment of silence, and then James cleared his throat.

“I didn’t know you knew my middle name,” he said, awkwardly, and Richard nodded.

“It’s on Wikipedia.” James cracked a nervous grin at that, and Richard looked at the staircase down the hallway. “Come on, mate, let’s go.”

They walked, side by side, back down the hallway; it seemed twice as gloomy as it had before, and Richard glanced around, shivering. He could have sworn the temperature had dropped, as well, as if an enormous shadow had fallen over the house. They stood on the bottom step, both giving the other the chance to chicken out and thus let them leave, and when neither took the cue they began to ascend, Richard half a step ahead of James. They walked up the stairs in silence, the only sounds the creaking of the steps and their breathing, which seemed maddeningly loud in the stillness of the house. As they reached the top, James put his hand on Richard’s arm again.

“Look at the window,” he said, sounding almost awestruck, and Richard saw his face as he turned. James’ blue eyes were wide, and as Richard followed their gaze he saw... the window. A normal, boring window, showing the nighttime vista outside - his brain told him he had missed something.

“It’s... it’s a window, James,” he said, and James nodded slowly.

“What time is it?” he said, voice tight, and Richard realised exactly what was wrong, at about the time his stomach apparently dropped through his boots. He lifted his arm to look at his watch.

“Watch says 8:23pm,” he rasped, his throat suddenly drier than the desert.

“Does that look like 8:20 on a summer’s eve to you?” James asked, still in that taut, quiet voice, and Richard shook his head. It had been blazing with sun before, and sunset was not due until at least half past 9. It should not have been pitch black with nothing but a street light illuminating the grass outside.

“I vote we get out of here,” he said quietly, and James nodded his agreement. “Let’s call the police.”

“Now you’re talking sense,” James said, and as they turned to head down the stairs something moved behind them. Richard turned, grabbing James’ arm, and the two of them faced the dark hallway.

“James, what if...?”

“Richard, it’s probably that girl from that movie about the possessed TVs you made me watch. I had to cover my television with a blanket for a week,” James hissed, but Richard had taken the last step and was up on the landing. “Wh- Hammond!”

“James, he’s...” Richard stepped onto the corridor and looked from left to right. The hallway was empty. “Right... not here.” His heart was in his mouth, but he saw the door which he knew led to Jeremy’s bedroom and headed for it, hearing James’ footsteps speed up behind him as he vanished out of sight.

“Hammond!”

He ignored him, putting his hand to the doorknob. A current ran through his fingers as soon as he touched the handle, and luckily for him James immediately pushed him away from it. He fell to the floor, gasping in silent pain as he stared at the raw, shiny pink flesh on his hand.

“You idiot, can’t you see it’s wired up?!” James snapped at him, blue eyes still wide with fear, before he dropped to his knees next to him. “Jesus Christ, you total imbecile, it could’ve been any voltage, it could’ve stopped your heart...”

Richard looked past him and at the door. It wasn’t even a subtle trap - someone had bored through the door handle and inserted thick wires into it. He hadn’t been paying attention, and luckily, James had. James grabbed his uninjured hand and pulled him to his feet, and then looked around.

“Can you... disarm it?” Richard hazarded, and James nodded, pulling off his jacket. He wrapped an arm of it around one hand, the rest left to fall underneath, and steadied himself against the wall.

“Now, if I know Jeremy Clarkson, which I do,” he said quietly, “this will be about as well made as Geoff was.” Richard grinned weakly as he remembered that stupid electric tin-can they had made, and then James had grabbed the wire in the hand he had wrapped up and pulled sharply. It came loose, and James staggered back, staring at the door handle. “Incomplete circuit should equal no electric shocks,” he mused, and, using the unwrapped-up hand, touched it with the back of his hand. “You see, when you touch something potentially electrified, you should use the back of your hand, as the electricity will cause the muscles in your hand to clench up and clutch onto the electrified thing, whatever that may be. You idiot.”

“I’m sorry, I was expecting Clarkson to have electrified his bedroom door, of course,” Richard muttered sarcastically, but secretly he was grateful to his friend and his secret troves of knowledge. Not that he was going to say that out loud. James opened the door carefully, and they both stood in the doorway as it swung open, looking into the almost pitch-black room.

There was the sound of what was very clearly a gun cocking from behind them, and the two of them froze, before both putting their hands up at the same time.

“Get out.”

“Jezza?” James said slowly.

“I said, get out.”

“Jeremy, please, we’re here to help you,” Richard said slowly, and there was a moment before there was a bang from directly above their heads and they both jumped violently. Lumps of plaster fell onto their heads, and Richard could suddenly hear almost nothing over the sound of his own ragged breathing and furious heartbeat. He imagined James felt much the same.

“J-Jezza, Francie came round,” James said, gulping in lungfuls of air in between words, and there was another moment of silence. When there was no accompanying gunshot, the two of them turned around, hands still in the air.

Jeremy looked... broken.

He was pale as death, holding the gun in shaking hands as he reloaded - it was entirely possible he had intended to shoot them both and missed. His pale blue eyes were rimmed with horrible thick black bags, and his teeth were sunk into his bottom lip as he stared the two of them down.

“I’m going to give the two of you five seconds to get down the staircase, and then I’m going to shoot you if you aren’t gone,” he said, and his voice was pained and empty. “I mean it.”

“Jeremy, she told us not to come here,” James continued.

“Five.”

“Jeremy, what’s happened? Please tell us...”

“Four.”

“...we’ve called the police. The police know we’re here,” Richard added, helplessly. Perhaps a lie would mean they got to walk out of there.

“Three.”

“Jesus Christ, I think he’s actually going to do it,” James whispered, horror-stricken.

“Two.”

“Hammond, come on!” James gasped, and grabbed Richard’s burnt hand, ignoring the other’s howl of pain as he dragged him down the stairs and out of the front door, both of them tripping and sprawling in front of the door onto the drive. Richard wheezed in pain, hand opening and closing helplessly, and James rolled over to see the front door slam shut.

* * *

The two of them drove in their separate cars in complete silence, their brains buzzing with questions, until finally they arrived back at Richard’s house. Richard wasn’t entirely sure why James hadn’t just returned home; the man had just followed him, and pulled up behind him as they got to the house.

“Richard,” he said quietly, and Richard nodded. “Do we call the police?”

“We call the police,” Richard said hoarsely. “Jesus, where did he get a gun from? Who would he get to sign off on it?”

“You need two referees, you need to apply to the police with a damn good reason. Well, if pest control can be considered a good reason,” James said, and Richard remembered that he owned a gun license as well. “It must have been before he went totally loony.”

“Unless he stole it,” Richard said quietly, and James nodded.

“Are you going to do the deed?” he asked, and Richard looked at him. He felt a stone rise in his throat, remembering the fevered look in Jeremy’s eyes as he’d levelled the rifle at them. He swallowed nervously, and James nodded, pulling out his mobile phone.

“Thank you,” Richard said quietly, and listened as James called the police. He couldn’t help but feel as if he were betraying Jeremy somehow, which was ridiculous; the man had pulled a gun on him, his best friend had pulled a gun on him and threatened to kill him, not to mention burning all the skin off his hand and potentially attempting to electrocute him. As if to remind him, his palm throbbed with pain, and he looked at the pink shiny flesh. It burnt, obviously, and he winced.

“We should’ve gotten that under cold water,” James said absently, shoving his phone back in his pocket. “Do you need to be driven to the hospital?”

“Listen, we... I... it’s probably midnight,” Richard said, trying not to think about the fact time had apparently gone missing for a few hours. “Mindy is going to be angry enough as it is.” James nodded, and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Listen, Hammond... don’t be a stranger, alright?” he said, pleadingly, and Richard nodded. “Please.” Richard, had he not been Richard Hammond staring at James May, king of the non-tactile humans, would have probably hugged the other man, but as it was, he put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and nodded.

“I won’t,” he said sincerely, and looked at the house. “If Mindy doesn’t kill me.”


	6. Chapter 6

            “ _It is one a.m._!”

            Richard winced, and put his hands up, backing away from the livid banshee that had apparently replaced his wife. He glanced up at the ceiling, and put his finger to his lips.

            “Richard Hammond, you will not tell me to  _shut up_ ,” Mindy hissed. “You will...”

            “Mindy, I...”

            “ _Shut up_ . You will not talk over me, you will  _listen_ to me!” she snarled, and Richard fell silent, staring at her in terror. “You are  _forty-three_ _years old_ , Richard. You are a father, and I will not allow you to go gallivanting off with with your friends whenever you want. I called you  _six times_ !”

            Richard pulled out his phone, and pressed the on button. When it failed to elicit a response, he shook it.

            “Don’t give me any bullshit about your phone being broken,” Mindy snapped, as he opened his mouth to explain. “I don’t care. I shouldn’t  _have_ to phone you! You should have come back when you said you were going to!” Richard opened his mouth again, and Mindy actually  _slapped_ the underneath of his chin, shutting it for him. “No! No, Richard! Willow went to bed and the last thing she asked was ‘Did Dad like my picture?’ Did you even  _look_ at it? Did you?” Richard flushed a deep, mortified crimson, and began to stutter awkwardly.

            “I-It’s on the dashboard...”

            “Grow up,” Mindy said, almost disbelieving, and Richard stared at her. “Grow up, Richard Hammond. You had your extended childhood chasing your friends about in fast cars, far longer than you ever had to. Jeremy is a childish arsehole and James never had kids so he never had to grow up. Tough luck. You do.” She swept past him, and he stared at her retreating back. “You can sleep in the car tonight, if you love it so much.”

            Richard knew when he was defeated, and walked outside again. He had a blanket in the back of the car in case of emergency, so it wasn’t like he was going to be cold; the summer night was also merely cool, instead of cold, and so he would probably be alright. He wondered if James was close enough to turn around and let him stay at his, and then he perished the thought immediately.

            He crawled into the backseat, tucking the blanket around him, and as he did so he saw the drawing on the dashboard. Reaching across, he grabbed the piece of paper and unrolled it.

            It was him - Willow always drew him about a foot shorter than everyone else in the picture, which was a little humiliating but pretty amusing - standing in the middle of the paper, and definitely looking unhappy. He appeared to be standing next to a old woman that was identified with the label ‘Uncle James’, and-

            He squinted.

            They were in a house that looked very familiar. He was clutching onto a door handle, and blue lightning-shaped sparks seemed to be coming off of him...

            He glanced all over the paper in disbelief, blinking. Even his hand had been drawn in red rather than the black that the rest of him had been, and as he looked between his still-unbandaged hand and the picture he shook his head in horror.

* * *

            James walked into his house, closing the front door and feeling a little bit of relief as he leant against it. It was over, then, he guessed. The problem with Jeremy had been that he had gone completely batshit insane and stolen a gun, which was a pretty big problem but surely, now, it would be sorted?

            He breathed in to let out a sigh of relief, and felt the air catch in his throat; he coughed, once, and then again. In fact, he couldn’t stop; it felt as if the air had grown sharp in his throat and was scratching him. He coughed again, gasping for air before the next wave of hacking rasps forced their way from his throat and left him sprawling to his knees, fingers clenching in the soft carpet.

            He choked, gasping for air, and as he looked up, a figure walked past his window. Just once, and very fast, but he saw enough of them to start panicking even as he blacked out.

* * *

            The next morning, a suitably chastened Richard sat in the front room, Willow at his feet scribbling away. He wanted to ask her why she had drawn it, what exactly had possessed her, but it was over, and bringing it up felt it would be dangerously close to setting everything in motion again.

            Mindy still was not talking to him; he had not told her about the gun, dared not tell her about the gun, but had shown her his hand and she had slammed a First Aid booklet down onto it with no reaction to his yelp of pain. Izzy had loudly told her best friend over the phone that ‘Mindy was really  _angry_ with Rich’, having decided that not calling them Mum and Dad any more would make her  _incredibly_ grown up. The fact that the first thing she had said after hanging up the phone was ‘ _Muuuum_ , can I have some money to go out to town on Monday?’ and then ‘ _Daaaaaaad_ , will you give me a lift on Monday?’ had made it all seem preposterously funny.

            Willow was still drawing.

            “Willow, honey, what are you drawing?” Richard asked, cycling through channels. The news - depressing. Cars - interesting, but apparently just an advert. Some program called  _Nature Break_ \- the guy’s moustache was positively creepy.

            “I’m drawing the tall man, Dad,” Willow said casually. Kids TV- Willow was ten and thus had decided she was watching whatever  _Izzy_ was watching, so that was out. More cars - the same bloody advert. A music video. He realised belatedly he was pressing the blue button to cycle through channels that had been set as ‘Favourites’.

            “The tall man? Uncle Jeremy?” he asked, and then shook his head. The  _kids_ called them ‘Uncle’ in the same way everyone refers to their parents’ best mates as their aunts and uncles. It didn’t mean he had to. News. News. News. God, the news was depressing today.

            “No, Dad, the other tall man,” Willow said vaguely, and continued scribbling.

            “ _Richard_ ?!”

            Richard sat up, eyes suddenly wide. That had been Mindy, and she had sounded terrified. He jumped up, and looked back at Willow.

            “It’s safe,” she said, enigmatically, and then he was in the kitchen, where Mindy stood holding the phone out to him. Her pale face almost convinced him that the events of last night had been divulged, and then the phone was at his ear.

            “Hello?”

            “Mr. Hammond?” It was a woman, a woman he didn’t know. “This is Hammersmith Hospital.”

_James. Oh god, Jeremy had gone to James’ in the middle of the night and shot him_ .

            “Y-yes?”

            “Mr. Hammond, a Mr. James May who claims to be your friend-” He could hear almost excitement bubbling under her voice, and knew that she clearly knew who they both were and was just going through protocol. “-who was hospitalised late last night is here. We aren’t releasing him until tomorrow, when a few background checks should come back, but he wants you to inform you of his hospitalisation and for you to come and see him.”

            “I’ll be there,” Richard said hoarsely, and hung up. James had asked for him. That meant he was probably alright, along with the nurse’s deeply unprofessional excitement. But why was he in hospital?! He turned to Mindy, who nodded.

            “This is bigger than I thought, isn’t it?” she asked, so tight-lipped that the skin around her mouth had gone white, like somebody’s knuckles on a rollercoaster. “If you go, now...” Richard braced to hear the ultimatum he did not want -  _I’m leaving, I won’t be here when you get back_ \- coming out of her mouth. “...I want a full explanation. No secrets. You understand me?”

            He nodded, and grabbed his keys from next to the phone. As he walked to the front door, Willow handed him another sheet of paper.

            “The tall man,” she whispered, and he shoved it into his pocket, kissing her on the head.

            “Be good for your mum. I’ll be back soon,” he said, and then vanished.

* * *

 

            “It was... it was about eight feet tall,” James said quietly.

            The man was fine, to Richard’s relief; and it had not been Jeremy who had called at his house. In fact, nobody had technically called. He had a bandage around his head where he had hit it - Richard had been uncomfortably and forcibly gripped by nostalgia and yanked back to the Middle East special - but he was otherwise alright.

            “Was it wearing a suit?” Richard asked, and James thought for a moment before nodding cautiously. “Oh, Jesus.”

            “It wasn’t him, mate,” James said, smiling tiredly, and Richard let out a bray of laughter involuntarily. “It wasn’t Jez, though. I... I guess it called the ambulance, because I woke up here.” He shook himself. “They.  _They_ called the ambulance.”

            “James, I have i- that person on video,” Richard said quietly, and James looked at him. “They were following Jeremy before he went... completely fruit-loop.” James looked at him, and Richard saw a look in his eye, one that meant  _secrets_ . “James, what is it?”

            “I... I called the police this morning,” James said quietly, and when Richard did not interrupt, he continued, “to ask how Jeremy was. They were...” He stopped, laughing bitterly. “...confused. There was no record of the phone call made last night.” Richard stared at him. “So I called back five minutes later. Testing something, if you will. No record of the phone call I had made five minutes prior, Hammond.” His fingers were knotting ceaselessly in the thin hospital blankets. “It’s like... I don’t know.” Richard wanted to open his mouth and express his incredulity at the impossibility of that, of all of it, but then he reached into his pocket and opened the picture that Willow had drawn.

            “Willow, she’s... she’s drawing the guy,” he murmured, and pushed the paper towards James. It was, indeed, a crude drawing of a tall man, done entirely in black crayon - a tall man in a suit, with no face. James took the piece of paper and nearly dropped it, hands shaking as he fumbled it.

            There was a moment of silence, where Richard put his head in his hands, and then James handed the picture back.

            “But who  _are_ they?” he murmured, and Richard shrugged. “I mean, who has Jeremy pissed off enough to want to potentially drive him insane or kill him?” They shared a moment of silence as the prospective lists in their heads grew and grew until finally the only person they hadn’t included was a very theoretical ‘someone living under a rock somewhere’.

            “This is going to be difficult, isn’t it?” Richard said quietly, and James nodded ruefully. “The police are on their side, whoever they are.” He jumped up, and began to pace the small private room. “I didn’t think things like this  _happened_ !”

            “So do we assume they’re from the government?” James asked slowly. Something was screaming at him from the back of his mind. Something from Australia, something he was supposed to remember...

            “I guess, in order to get the police to ignore you, you’ve got to be higher than the police,” Richard mused, cutting off that train of thought. “Oh god. Maybe we shouldn’t be messing with this...” He looked at James earnestly, his brown eyes wide and pleading.

            “This person was at  _my_ house. Richard, he... I don’t know. He gassed me, or something,” James said uneasily. “I don’t feel safe, and if I can’t... if the police...” He took a deep breath. “Please don’t leave me.”

            For Richard, there was another, giddy rush of nostalgia, back to the Death Road in Bolivia where James had pleaded with him to stay in the pitch black. The threat of death had been hanging over them, or more accurately sloping away to the side, and now it felt much the same, only, this time, they were both taking a hard right.

* * *

            Meanwhile, Mindy Hammond was worrying.

            She had a lot to worry about, of course, on a day to day basis; from the mundane, such as stopping Izzy from stealing all of her make-up to stopping Willow from then stealing it from Izzy, or taking care of the horses when Richard was busy, or even what she was going to write about in her column; to the bigger and more individual, such as worrying every time Richard had a headache that there was still damage to his brain, or that when Izzy ran off to town with her friends that she would be scooped into a car and would never come back except in a box. These, she had discovered through her various friendships, were mostly typical mother/wife concerns.

            Lately, however, it had been different. Richard was distracted and crotchety, and sometimes she wondered, idly, if he had been having an affair. But obviously, that had not been the problem; he was spending  _all_ of his time at the house. It was a little smothering, but considering how she had almost not had a Richard to be smothered by, she was prepared to put up with that, for love.

            “Mum,” Willow said, from where she was sat by the window. “The tall man is in the garden.”

            Distracted, Mindy walked to the window, where she looked over her daughter’s shoulder.

            “Not now, sweetheart,” she said quietly, kissing her daughter on the head, before her brain caught up with her ears. “Wait, who?”

            “Oh, wait,” Willow said, sounding woefully disappointed. “It’s just Uncle Jeremy.” She went back to messing about with the colouring pad she held - Mindy took a mental note to try and divert her interest to something else - and squinted. No doubt about it, there was definitely somebody on the grounds.

            “Back in a second, sweetie,” she said absently, and made her way to the back door. She debated opening it for a moment; Richard had seemed pretty fraught when he came back from Jeremy’s and of course, there was the bizarre case of his hand, which he had not explained to her as they were not, in fact, speaking. Perhaps Jeremy had come to apologise?

            As she pulled the door open, a hand gripped tightly around her wrist.

* * *

 

            “Mindy?”

            Richard stood outside the hospital, staring at his phone. Most unusual for his wife to have broken the silence; she was loving, and caring, and sweet, but she had the tenacity of a bulldog and would happily have let him stew for a week rather than back down when she knew she was right.

            “Hello, Richard?”

            Her voice was crackly, but it was definitely her. He couldn’t help but smile.

            “Mindy, are you alright?”

            “Yes. How’s James? Listen, Jeremy’s here, and...” There was a sudden feeling of icy-cold in Richard’s chest, as if a ghost or ghoul had crept up behind him and slid an ethereal hand into his torso to grab at his heart.

            “Who?” he croaked.

            “Jeremy,” Mindy said. Her voice was quieter, as if the phone signal was breaking up, and Richard thumped the volume button, praying he had misheard her. “Richard, he w-” She definitely  _was_ breaking up. “He- ha- -ch-”

            “Mindy, I’m coming home, just...” Richard didn’t get to finish his sentence, because there was a blare of static so loud that he threw his phone of pure instinct, and when he recovered and dived for it to save it from a tiny Peugeot trundling to the car park that would have turned it into a mush of wires and chips, it had turned itself off. Cursing, Richard turned and sprinted to his motorbike.


	7. Chapter 7

            As he arrived home, it all looked... normal. Nothing out of place - no extra _car_ , and he doubted Jeremy would take any kind of mass transit. He was insane, but not _that_ mad - but still that cold feeling in his chest had not subsided, and it only spread to his extremities once he noticed that the front door was open. Something had been carved in the wood, a circle with a cross through it, and he stared at it for a second before rushing in.

            “Dad?”

            He almost fainted in relief, scooping Willow up even though she really was too big at ten, and then placed her down.

            “Dad, don’t pick me up, that’s for  _kids_ ,” Willow said, sounding disgusted.

            “Where’s your mother? Where’s Uncle Jeremy?”

            “It wasn’t Uncle Jeremy after all,” Willow said, smiling. “Well, it was, but the tall man got here first.” The relief left his body in a flood, and the ice came back to fill up the space. “I think Mum’s upstairs.”

            Richard had a moment of crisis of leaving his youngest daughter unattended, and then as Izzy sloped out of the kitchen, looking just as teenage as ever, sprinted up the stairs.

            He found Mindy lying on the bed, asleep or unconscious.

* * *

            James was turfed out of the hospital the next day, head bandage removed, and drove straight to Richard’s. He didn’t feel like it was safe, his own home, and he hoped Richard would understand his turning up out of the blue; he was supposed to stay with somebody for the first night anyway, in case his head injury was more serious than they anticipated, and Sarah hadn’t picked up her phone when he had called.

            Pressing, he waited for a moment, listening to the chimes fade away to deep into the house, and then he knocked, his brow furrowed. He was fairly certain Richard would have warned him, had he left the house - he wasn’t sure  _why_ , but he was definitely  _sure_ . Then the door creaked open, and Willow stood there, Izzy just behind her.

            “Hey, Uncle James!” she smiled, and wrapped her arms around his waist.

            “Hey,” Izzy added, sounding much less enthused about his presence. She had a thin, worried, drawn look, and she was very much  _not_ playing with her phone, which seemed unusual from Richard’s recent descriptions.

            “Um, hello, girls,” James said slowly. Surely Richard and Mindy wouldn’t have left them alone? “Where’s your dad?”

            “Mum’s not well,” Izzy said quietly, and Willow nodded. In contrast to her elder sister, Willow was chirpy and gleeful; he knew often things went over younger kids’ heads, but Willow seemed a little over-enthusiastic.

            “Can I come in?” he asked, and Izzy nodded.

            “I’ll get Dad,” she said quietly, and vanished upstairs, leaving James stood in the hall with Willow. The young girl looked at the paper in her hand.

            “Don’t look at it until later,” she said, folding her arms and trying to look stern. “Promise me.” He promised her very solemnly, and then Richard appeared at the foot of the stairs, haggard and shaking.

            “James,” he said, voice shaking, and turned to Izzy. “Izzy, keep an eye on your mum, okay?”

            Izzy turned to trail upstairs, and Richard swept past James, ignoring Willow who was now sitting just outside the door to the den.

            “What’s the matter with Mindy? Should I come back later?” the older man said quietly, and Richard shook his head, slumping onto the couch in the living room. James sat next to him, and Richard ran his hands over his face, before blinking wearily at his reflection in the TV.

            “I need you here. We need to start watching those tapes. Now,” he said pointedly, and James looked at him in surprise. “Mindy’s... she’s... there has to be an answer in the tapes.” James looked from the TV and back to him. “Mindy’s... it’s hard to explain.”

            “Richard, do we need to get her to the hospital?” James asked gently, and Richard shook his head violently.

            “I called an ambulance,” he murmured. “Of course, the emergency services haven’t been too reliable with us recently, have they...” James put his head in his hands as well. “She’s out of it. She’s... she won’t say a word, but she just sits and stares at the treeline. It’s been... god, it’s like she’s in some kind of coma or something. But... awake.” He bit his lip, and stared above the television out of the window towards the trees. “The phone stopped working last time I called the emergency services. It just... crackles.” His voice was flat and low.

            “Let’s drive her to the hospital,” James said decisively, and Richard looked at him.

            “Will you stay with the girls whilst I go?” he asked, and James nodded. Suddenly he found himself engulfed in a hug that he had no idea how to reciprocate; instead he patted Richard’s back awkwardly, praying that the other man would not cry. Richard pulled back, breathing out slowly, and then grabbed his coat, and turned to Izzy.

            “Behave, alright?” he said, voice shaking, and Izzy nodded. “I’ll be back later.” He passed her on the stairs, and Izzy looked at James in barely-disguised fright.

            “It’s going to be okay,” James said quietly, and she nodded quietly, stepping down next to him as Richard came back, slower this time. James couldn’t help but stare at Mindy in undisguised horror for a moment, before regaining his iron self-control.

            She was paler than the white blouse she wore, with black circles around her eyes that James could barely believe weren’t makeup. Her blonde hair was ratty and stuck up in places, and as she walked past James she didn’t even look at him, gaze fixed on the ground like a frightened child. Her fingers were knotting ceaselessly before her, and as Izzy leaned forward to brush her hair out of her face she stared up at her, almost as if she didn’t recognise her own daughter.

            “I’ll be back later,” Richard repeated, voice dull, and guided Mindy out of the front door. The moment she had gone, James put his head in his hands, before remembering that, if not for Izzy, who was grown-up enough to tell what was going on, then for Willow’s sake, he had to keep it together.

            “So,” he said, voice so brittle with brightness it was like sunshine through sugar glass, “I heard your dad got that new  _Gran Turismo_ game?” Izzy nodded, and wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve.

            “U-uncle James,” she whispered, and he looked at her. “Is Mum going to be alright?”

            “Yes,” he said, nodding firmly. “She’s going to be fine, Izzy.”

* * *

            Three hours later, and James had succeeded in getting Izzy distracted from her mother’s strange state by instigating a sportsman’s bet over who would win at a racing game on the PS3. Of course, he was fairly certain it would be her; video games weren’t exactly his forté, after all. However, his knowledge of the racing circuits - occasionally firsthand, was giving him an edge, and as she was shouting about ‘unfair advantages’ for the third time, the doorbell rang.

            “Willow, would you like a go?” James asked, and Willow shook her head, scribbling away at a piece of paper. “Go on.” She looked up, sighed, and took the controller, plonking herself down next to Izzy. “Back in a mo.”

            He placed his hand on the door handle, and experienced a sense of foreboding so strong that, for a minute, he was terrified the knob had been rigged like the one at Jeremy’s house. Exhaling, he pulled the door open, and was pushed back immediately by the figure that barged in.

            “He-” He began, and then a hand was clapped over his mouth and he was staring into blue eyes that he knew very well. He struck out immediately, knocking Jeremy back against the wall, and immediately put himself in between the man and the door to the living room, fists raised.

            “Get out,” he hissed, and Jeremy looked at him before raising his hands.

            “Please,” he said weakly, and James shook his head, taking a step forward.

            “I said, get out,” he growled, and Jeremy shook his head.

            “James, please, listen to me,” he said, tone of voice pleading, and James looked over his shoulder to where he could see Izzy and Willow still playing the video game in the front room.

            “Outside,” he snapped, and when Jeremy went to shake his head and push past him he grasped his wrist. “Outside. Now.” Jeremy looked at him sideways, and then backed away, opening the door. James followed him, closing the door to, and as Jeremy went to open his mouth he interrupted.

            “Arms out.”

            “ _What_ ?” Jeremy looked at him, expression one of exasperation, and James bunched his fist.

            “Arms out, or I’ll make you,” he said quietly, and Jeremy shook his head before holding his arms out to his side. He was in a fairly well-fitting t-shirt and jeans, which were obviously fairly well-worn, and James glanced him up and down. “No gun on you this time?”

            “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Jeremy said quietly, putting his head in his hands. “Give me a chance.”

            “There are children in this house, and you almost shot their father,” James said. He could feel a cold, sick fury building up from somewhere, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it when it had fully manifested. “How dare you ask me to give you a chance?”

            “I need help,” Jeremy said, simply, and there was a moment of silence where James’ jaw went slack in disbelief. “James-”

            “ _Of course you do_ .” The words were spat at Jeremy with so much venom that he had to blink a few times, scarcely believing the figure in front of him was the so-docile James May. “That’s what it’s always like, isn’t it?! Fuck up everything for everyone else and when  _you_ need help, come crawling back!” James looked as if he was about to fly at Jeremy now, and Jeremy took a step back again. At this rate, he was going to end up in the pond.

            “James, listen to me!” he snapped, and James opened his mouth. “James, shut up and  _listen_ to me. Please.” James shut his mouth, and turned away, breathing in deeply through his nostrils. “I didn’t  _do_ that to Mindy.” James turned his head towards him, and Jeremy shook his head.

            “You know about Mindy?” he said quietly, and Jeremy nodded.

            “Did… Did Hammond not say?” he asked, sounding a little stunned, and James shook his head. “I was here. I came here yesterday to talk to Hammond.” James blinked in confusion, and Jeremy nodded. “But he wasn’t here.”

            “He was visiting me. In hospital,” James said quietly, and Jeremy immediately took a step forward, blue eyes filled with concern. “Stay back. Your friend in the suit turned up and gave me quite a head injury.”

            Jeremy’s face went the colour of old porridge so fast that James almost thought he was going to have to catch him; his legs went, and he had to lean against the wall of the house.

            “You’ve seen it too?” he asked weakly, and James nodded, bewildered. “Oh fucking hell…”

            “Wha- _who_ is it?” James asked carefully, and Jeremy shook his head.

            “Please let me in. It… it likes being outdoors, so we might be safer if we’re inside,” he said, and James shook his head. “James,  _please_ !” James took up a stance in the doorway, bracing himself for any onslaught the man could bring, and Jeremy sank to the floor, leaning back against the wall. “Do you at  _least_ have any fags?”

            James patted his pockets, and then leant back through the door, grabbing them from the table next to the doorway. Jeremy was still where he had left him, and he passed one to him, throwing him the lighter as well.

            “Francie came round,” he said, sitting on the step at an angle to Jeremy. The other man looked at him, and he had to turn his head away in case his pained expression swayed him. “She says you went mad. After the incident with the gun, I’m inclined to agree.”

            “I never threatened her. I never hurt her.” The ache in Jeremy’s voice made James soulsick for a moment. “Are they safe?”

            “Yes.” James had no idea, but he wasn’t going to add that to Jeremy’s mental state. “Don’t worry about that.” Jeremy put his head in his hands, and then took a quavering breath in, before looking back up at James.

            “Let me tell you what I remember.”


	8. Chapter 8

            When Richard arrived home, in an empty car, he almost couldn’t face his children. He sat outside for a full five minutes, before his front door opened and James looked outside, screwing his eyes up against a red sunset to pick out the car against the scarlet landscape.

             “Hammond?”

             He looked up, and saw the man tapping on his window.

             “We need to talk to you,” James said nervously, and Richard looked up at him blearily.

             “They asked me questions,” he said hollowly, and James raised an eyebrow. “They think I did this to her.”

             “What?”

             “They think I beat her into some kind of waking coma,” Richard said quietly, and James put his hand on the other man’s arm. “I mean… what do you say to that when she won’t even speak?” He put his head in his hands, and then jumped a mile as he accidentally leant on the horn. “Fuck!”

             “Richard,” James said quietly, and Richard looked up at him. “Come inside. You… there’s someone who knows something about what happened to Mindy.” The way Richard’s eyes lit up made James’ heart sink. He wasn’t going to like it _at all_. In fact, James was quite convinced that this was a mistake, but…

             “How are the girls?” Richard asked concernedly as he got out of the car. They walked towards the house, James trying to explain that they were both fine and were playing upstairs in a way that made the walk as long as was humanly possible. Richard stopped in the door, sniffing the air.

             “Have you been nicking my fags?” he asked, and James nodded, steering him towards the kitchen. “I could do with one-”

             He stopped short as he saw who was sat at the breakfast bar, drinking a pint of orange squash and staring at the pattern on the counter. There was a moment of silence where James carefully stepped back, and then a low growl came from Richard’s throat.

             Jeremy looked up, and then there was several seconds of very confused motion where three men moved extremely fast for their age. It ended with James bleeding heavily from the nose, pinioning Richard’s arms to his sides, and Jeremy with his hand over one eye flat on the floor.

             “ _What are you doing in my house_?” Richard snarled, struggling wildly, and Jeremy put his hand up. “ _Get out_!”

             “You have to listen to him!” James shouted in his ear, and Richard struggled again. “Hammond, just… just listen!”

             Jeremy scrambled up and put his hands out placatingly.

             “Please, I need you to know I didn’t do that to Mindy!” he said, and Richard glared at him. “Hammond, please. Richard. I did not do that to Mindy, but I know what did.” Richard did not look convinced. In fact, Richard looked somewhat rabid, but pointing it out would probably not help. “Sit down.”

             “ _Why are you in_ -?!” Richard began, and James jerked his arm up behind his back. This cut off his sentence in a grunt of pain, and he let out a gasp, half of pain, half of surprised betrayal.

             “Hammond, you need to listen to him,” James said gently, in contrast to the grip he was still holding him in. “If I let you go, do you promise you will not put anybody in this room - yourself included - in the _bloody_ hospital?” His voice snapped, and Richard nodded. James released him, and he pulled away from him, stalking over to the other side of the kitchen and glaring at the two of them, massaging his shoulder.

             “Talk,” he said, tersely, and Jeremy nodded, sitting down. Richard now loomed over him for possibly the first time ever, arms tightly folded.

             “It started last year…”

* * *

            _“...and yet,” James continued, his hand resting on the roof of the vintage Rolls, “I really am_ **proud** _of the old dog.”_

  _Jeremy stood off-camera, rolling his eyes._ **Yes, yes, James, you like clapped-out old broken crap. Wind on,** _he thought. The thing had broken down three times already, and if James hadn’t been a bit of a mechanical genius - a thought he refused to_ **ever** _think again in case James heard - it would probably have been left there and James would be driving whatever dreadful backup car the producers were keeping hidden from them._

  _He turned away, catching Andy’s eye as he did so, and mimed that he was vanishing for a smoke. Andy nodded, and he sloped off, hoping Richard wouldn’t run after him. He’d had enough of his mates for the moment; it had been a muggy, depressing day in November Italy, and his car leaked. The chance to fuck off for a smoke behind a shed somewhere with nobody teasing him about his damp trousers/shirt/jumper/hair would be marvellous._

  _Musing on the whimsy of Italian weather, he crept behind a small building that he assumed was an outside toilet - his knowledge of Italian plumbing wasn’t exactly A++, he wasn’t sure if they had toilets - and sparked up, and as he looked up, exhaling a cloud of smoke, something… something felt wrong. Painfully wrong, as if he’d just remembered the most painful moment of his life. His heart sank, his stomach flipped - every cheesy metaphor for nausea and more filled his body._

  _He fumbled for his mobile, half-believing for the first and only time in his life in psychic precognition; flubbed Francie’s phone number and almost rang Richard; and finally got through to his wife._

  _“Are you alright?” he gasped, and she chuckled, sounding a little worried nonetheless._

  _“Hello to you as well, dear. Are you? You don’t sound it. Has there been an accident?” He put a hand to his face. She sounded fine._

  _“How are the kids? Are you sure you’re all alright?” Something must’ve happened to one of them; something that send shockwaves across the sea and straight across all of his still-jangling nerves. Francie laughed again, and as he didn’t laugh with her the sound died._

  _“We’re all fine. Emily’s here, she’s helping Katya and Finlo with their homework…” Jeremy relaxed, slumping against the wall. “Are you really, really sure you’re okay?”_

  _“Yes, love. I just… I had this horrible feeling something awful had happened. Don’t ever tell anyone I said that.” He could almost see her smiling; not out of derision, but love, he hoped. “Take care, alright?”_

  _“Of course I will. I love you, Jeremy,” she said, gently, and he smiled._

  _“Love you, Francie.” In the background he heard voices shouting ‘Love you, Dad!’, and he hung up with a feeling of intense relief slowly burning out the terror. Still… he couldn’t shake the horrible icy feeling in his toes, and as he turned, he saw somebody watching him from behind the hotel. They were gone when he looked back._

* * *

  _“I’m not sharing with you, am I?” James asked as he glanced around the tiny, red-themed room, sounding horrified, and Jeremy nodded, casting a hateful eye at the loudly, slightly ill-timed clock that ticked in the corner._

  _“It’s alright, Hammond’s shacking up with Andy,” he grinned, and James rolled his eyes, dumping his bag on the end of his bed. “You need a shave, mate.”_

  _“I was thinking of keeping it. I’m not going to pretend I understand how the internet works or those who dwell within,” James grinned, “but there seems to be a bit of fondness for any facial hair I get.”_

  _“James, there is pterodactyl porn on the internet,” Jeremy said frankly. “Are you going to appear in that as well?” He rolled his eyes, and James threw a pair of socks at him. “And it makes you look homeless.”_

  _“Charming. Thank you, Clarkson. I’m going to brush my teeth, and if you touch my bag while I’m out of the room, I’ll kill you,” James said, not sounding particularly threatening at all, and grabbed a separate bag from within his bag. As he went into the toilet, Jeremy counted to three, and then grabbed his friend’s bag. True to form, it was full of everything in neat piles, separate bags, and neat order._

  _“James, have you been to see anyone about your OCD?” he called, and a heavy sigh came from the bathroom._

  _“I told you not to touch my bloody bag, Clarkson.”_

  _“I’m not touching it, honest.” Jeremy stood up, stretching and wincing as his back went_ **clunk** _; that didn’t sound good. The view from the window was exquisite; they were out in the countryside and multi-hued fields stretched out as far as the eye could see, broken up by quaint Itialian houses. Maybe he’d move out here with Francie when the kids were all gone…_

  _He saw a movement, down on the road, and tilted his head. It was difficult to see from this angle, a hedge in the way, but… there appeared to be a tall figure, staring at him from across the road. He blinked, throwing the window open. No doubt about it; in the grey light of the Italian late-afternoon, there was a tall figure in a black suit, and from here, it looked like they had a mask on…_

  _“James?” he called, not taking his eyes from the figure, and there was another sigh, followed by a gurgled reply. “James, come here.” There was the sound of spitting, and then James emerged from the bathroom, mouth surrounded by flecks of toothpaste foam which he wiped off on the back of his hand._

  _“What is it?” he sighed, and Jeremy turned to him, motioning out of the window._

  _“Can you see the-” He turned back, and the figure was gone. “Ah…”_

  _“Are you seeing things in your senility?” James said, grinning, and Jeremy punched him in the arm. “Easy, old man.”_

  _“You are_ **three** _years younger than me,” Jeremy snapped, and James gave a wide grin. “Oh, get over yourself.” He gave one last glance out of the window, and then turned around._

  _“We should turn in,” James continued. “You’ll need your sleep before you collect your pension tomorrow…” Jeremy grasped a pillow and threw it at James’ head, who caught it, snickering._

* * *

_The room was pitch-black when Jeremy next opened his eyes; he wasn’t sure what had awoken him from his slumber, but the clock’s hands indicated it was a little before quarter to five in the morning and still dark outside._

  _He stole a glance at James, wondering if he’d woken him up somehow; the other man was curled up in the foetal position, nothing more than a ball of hair visible above the covers and one foot sticking out near the foot of the bed. He was snoring faintly too, so he was clearly in the tranquil depths of sleep._

  _Jeremy rolled over, and an electric shock of terror paralysed him._

  _It was standing_ **right over him** _._

  _His eyes travelled up the dark figure’s shape right to its face, which it didn’t actually have; a white shape where its eyes and mouth should’ve been. It seemed, against all the odds, to be watching him, and it was definitely holding his wallet in one elongated white hand._

  _Jeremy tried to breathe in and couldn’t; he had only experienced sleep paralysis once, after an experimental drug-fuelled phase in his - much - younger years. The terror had never truly left him, and now as he looked at the creature he felt it crawl back and knot in his stomach like a nest of rats._

  _And then it was gone._

  _He took a ragged breath in, and sat up, his t-shirt clinging to him in the thin layer of cold sweat he found himself covered in. He reached out, grabbing James’ bare foot, and the other man jerked out of his sleep, battling with the covers for a moment._

  _“Wh’ is’t?”_

  _“The… there was someone in here,” Jeremy hissed, and James disentangled himself from the covers, blue eyes bleary and bloodshot._

  _“In where?” he murmured, voice hoarse from sleep, and Jeremy gestured around._

  _“They were stood next to my bed,” he said, and James sat up as well, blinking in the dull twilight of the room. “It was the person who was outside.”_

  _“Jeremy, you’re hardly the Queen or… that band… One… Projection or whatever. Girls aren’t breaking into hotels for you,” James yawned, stretching. “Besides, nobody knows we’re here.”_

  _“This person did. They were watching me,” Jeremy whispered, and James nodded. “James, are you taking me seriously.”_

  _“It’s five in the morning. I am taking this deathly seriously, because if it isn’t deathly serious I’m going to run you over first thing,” James sighed, and stood up. “Where were they?” Jeremy indicated the other side of the bed, and James wandered around, pulling back the curtains. “The window seems fine. It’s shut, as well, but we are two floors up.” There was a thud as he kicked something, and he bent down to grab it. “Your wallet’s here.”_

  _“It was holding it,” Jeremy said, snatching it from James’ hand. He opened it - everything still there. Driver’s license, organ donation card, cash… something was missing. He opened it wider, turned it inside out, shook it._

  _“What is it?” James asked, sitting on the end of the bed._

  _“All the pictures are gone,” Clarkson muttered, and James looked at him quizzically. “Of Katya and Finlo and Emily. They’re all gone.”_

* * *

             “Bollocks.”

             Jeremy stared at Richard, who was still glaring at him.

             “You never mentioned this. _Neither_ of you mentioned this,” he snapped, and James nodded.

             “I didn’t remember it,” he confessed, and Richard slammed his hand against the table.

             “So he could’ve made it up. _He made this up_!” he snarled, and James shook his head. “You asked me not to leave you! _How dare you!_ ”

             “Hammond, please. I can’t remember anything either,” Jeremy said quietly, and Richard looked at him. “I know you have my tapes, you got them from Andy. I want to help you go through them, because honestly? I can’t remember why my family left me. All I know is, that thing is following me around.”

             “Wait a minute. You said you wanted to protect Hammond.” It was James’ turn to sound accusatory now, rounding on Jeremy. “You said about…”

             “How am I meant to protect you against something that I can’t _remember_ , you idiot?” Jeremy snapped, and then there was five minutes of shouting that only ended when Izzy appeared in the doorway.

             “You’re back,” she whispered, looking wide-eyed and frightened, and Richard reached out to her. “Is Mum going to be alright?” Richard looked between the other two, glaring, and then nodding, hugging her tightly.

             “She’s going to be fine. We’ll go and see her in the morning, alright?” he whispered, and she nodded, sobbing into his shoulder. “Go on. Go upstairs, keep an eye on your sister.” She nodded, and was gone again. “You see? _That’s_ what I care about! My children, Jeremy!” The look on Jeremy’s face reminded him that Jeremy had lost his, and he finally toned his voice down. “You can sleep on the couch. James, so can you.” James looked relieved. “Tomorrow, we’re going to go through the tapes. _All_ of them. And you can tell me what the fuck is happening.” He walked out, to go upstairs, and left James and Jeremy alone in the kitchen.

             “All I want is to make it go _away_ ,” Jeremy said, and suddenly James was very aware of how old he was. It showed, in every line on his face.


	9. Chapter 9

            Richard lay in his bed, painfully conscious of the empty side of it. Everything was quiet in the house, but he couldn’t sleep; the worry of what the tall man could be, where he could be, was sending shivers up and down his spine, and finally he got up, sighing. He would do a circuit of the house; checking the windows, checking the doors, checking his family. Then he would go back to bed, and get this stupid nonsense of tall, besuited ghosts out of his head.

            He reached out to flick on the lightswitch and tutted when it didn’t work; leaning out into the corridor, he noticed that the landing light was off as well. His worried were confirmed when he turned around and noticed that the digital alarm clock was off.

            “Balls,” he hissed, and then picked up his keys from next to the bed, turning on the tiny torch he had attached to it. James would probably have a range of torches in his bedside cupboard, he thought, a smirk that had very little to do with humour pulling his mouth to the side.

            First to the girls, checking the windows as a matter of course; he stuck his head through Willow’s doorway, and saw she was fast asleep in her bed. He tiptoed across the room, and kissed her forehead; she didn’t move, breathing even and steady.

            Next to Izzy’s room; she was more fitful in her sleep, muttering. She’d always talked in her sleep; even as a baby she’d gurgled during her naps. It’d been alarming to hear over the baby monitor; a string of nonsensical words and a ‘ _da-da_!’ only to go and check on her and realise she was fast asleep. He kissed her on the forehead as well, and she settled down.

            Downstairs to two people who definitely weren’t getting a goodnight kiss; Jeremy was sprawled, hanging off of the sofa, and Richard had to admit he looked better - well, better than he had done - when he was asleep. It crossed his mind that, in his state, he probably hadn’t been getting much sleep. James was tucked up slightly neater, snuffling away to himself. All the windows down here were shut, and he made sure they were locked as well.

            The front door was locked and bolted, as was the back, and the side door through the kitchen; he made his way upstairs, feet almost silent on the stairs.

            It was as he reached Willow’s door that he realised he could hear something.

            Pushing the door aside, he saw that her bed was empty, and the wave of nausea and blind panic that engulfed him nearly made him faint; he slumped against the door, and as he did he saw that _It_ was in the room. And _It_ was holding his daughter.

            He had barely a second to take in the sight before him - the almost freakishly-tall figure, black-suited, and _no face_ \- and then he was rushing at it, intent on snatching his baby girl from its arms.

            He was catapulted backwards, the air knocked from his lungs as he flew through the doorway and hit the wall on the other side, and slid to the floor from legs that would no longer support his weight. 

* * *

 

            Jeremy awoke, and heard a loud thud from upstairs.

            He glanced aside and saw that James’ couch was empty; that wasn’t the pressing issue, though, and he darted upstairs to see Richard slumped at the foot of a wall, wheezing violently. He looked in through the door, assessed the situation, and ran in.

            This time, the figure vanished, and Jeremy caught Willow as she tumbled, still half asleep, from midair.

            Richard stumbled in, still struggling to catch his breath, and plucked her from him, holding her close to him. She stared at him, blinking crossly.

            “Daddy, why did you _do_ that?” she mumbled sleepily, and Richard looked at her. “That’s the tall man!” She pouted, and her lip wobbled dangerously as a tear flooded down her cheek. “He tucks me in _every night_!”

            Richard’s mouth fell open, as did Jeremy’s, and Willow began to sob into the crook of Richard’s neck.

            “Oh, oh Jesus,” Richard whispered, and held her even tighter. “Jeremy, go and get Izzy awake. I need to get them both out of here, they’ve got to go to Mindy’s mother’s.” He placed Willow gently down on the bed, and began to pull her clothes out of her cupboards. “It’s going to be okay, Willow.” 

* * *

 

            James opened his eyes, and knew he wasn’t in Richard’s living room.

            It was cold, bitingly cold, for one, and something was scratching at his ankles. In fact, he was really very uncomfortable. A quick glance around revealed that this was because he was outside.

            He glanced around. No, he really _was_ outside - moonlight dappling the few areas of ground it could, where the tall trees above him didn’t cover. He was standing outside, in his t-shirt and a pair of pyjama pants, no shoes, no socks, and not a damn clue where he was.

            “Hello?” he called, and pushed his hand into his pocket to see if his mobile phone was in there. It encountered a rough piece of paper, and he pulled it out.

            _Don’t look at it until later._

            Willow’s drawing.

            He opened it up, and found it was largely blank, except for some large, scrawled letters in stark black pencil.

            _Behind You_.

            James turned around.

* * *

 

            “He’s not in the house, but his phone’s gone, as have his shoes. Maybe he went home?” Richard said quietly, and Jeremy shook his head. “Look, his car’s gone as well…”

            “It doesn’t seem right. I’ll go and get Mindy, you get the girls, and we’ll…”

            “No, Mindy’s safe where she is,” Richard said firmly. “You need to stay here in case James comes back, or you need to go to his house or something…”

            _Thud_.

            The two of them froze, and Izzy, where she was bundled up on the couch holding her little sister who had fallen back to sleep, looked up at them.

            “Dad, what’s going on?” she said, in a kind of half-sob.

            “I’ll go,” Jeremy said darkly, and he left Richard to sit with the girls as he walked upstairs. It was pitch-black - the torch remained with the girls - and so he trod as quietly as he could, trying to keep the element of surprise on his side.

            His heart lurched as a figure scuttled across the corridor - and at the same time he was sure it wasn’t the _thing_. It was too human, although its movement was animalistic at best; he froze, and it froze as well, snapping its head upwards.

            Its face was _glowing_ , and Jeremy light-headedly wondered if the others were speaking the truth and he _had_ gone mad, and then he realised it was wearing a balaclava with a glow-in-the-dark design printed on it. He couldn’t tell what it was, because at that point, it lunged for him.

            It seemed to be made of shadows, but as he grabbed it and threw it backwards, barely stopping it, it was just because it wore black clothes; a black hooded, black trousers, and that black balaclava. It was very obviously human; but he didn’t exactly want to stop and unmask it.

            It lunged for him again, gripping his throat with vice-like hands; but he took a chance, and went for the groin, figuring that even if it was a girl, it’d _hurt_. He missed, but hit them in the stomach, and they went sprawling backwards in dead silence.

            He really, really wished he _hadn’t_ thought that phrase.

            “No,” he said, sounding oddly pleased. “No, you want to get to them, you go through me.”

            It scrambled up, and dived for him again, and he lunged forward, momentum carrying him along the long landing, carrying the masked being with him, and sending it _through the window_. He winced as the glass smashed and the person flew down an entire storey, but he ran downstairs anyway.

            “Hammond, we-” He wheezed, the exertion catching up. “We have a situation. Get the girls and go.” Richard looked as if he were about to either faint or vomit, but he shook Willow gently awake, and set her on her feet as Izzy did up her coat.

            “Girls, Uncle Jeremy is going to take you to your grandma’s. Won’t that be nice?” he said hurriedly, and Izzy stared at him.

            “Dad, what did you _do_?” she asked, shakily, and Richard squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m not a child. _Tell me what happened_!”

            “Izzy, I need you to look after Willow. Izzy, it’s okay, you’re going to be fine,” he said gently, dropping to his knees in front of her, and she shook her head, sniffling. “Isabella Hammond.” He grasped her hands. “You’re a grown up, right? Please, look after your sister.” She nodded, and grasped Willow’s hand tightly.

            “Come on, Willow.” Her voice was painfully tight. Willow nodded, and leant forward to give him a peck on the cheek as he straightened up.

            “Bye, Daddy,” she murmured, and then Jeremy was shepherding them towards the door.

            “Keep your phone on,” he said to Richard. “Keep your phone on, and try and find James. I’ll be back in…” He foundered for a moment, and Richard remembered that giving him the address might be useful.

            “Uh… satnav, the postcode’s B15… uh…”

            “I’ll give him the address, Dad,” Izzy said, still with that stiff little voice. “You… are you driving Mum up?” Richard shook his head, and a tear streaked down her face. “Oh…”

            “Come on, girls. Let’s go,” Jeremy said quietly, and led them gently out of the door. Richard collapsed onto the sofa as soon as they were gone, his head in his hands.

            It had been in his _home_. It’d gotten in somehow, and it’d been holding his daughter. By her account, it had been there every night. He had - he had failed to protect his family. _He’d failed_.

            He began to cry, hands over his face, in a way he had never cried before; low, deep sobs that _hurt_ in their intensity, his ribs aching as tears flooded from between his fingers, leaving cold damp trails down his wrists. His wife. Gone. His kids. Gone. He had _failed_.

            The house seemed much larger and emptier around him now.


	10. Chapter 10

            Richard must have fallen asleep - it was astonishing how the body could still do that, at the depths of despair - because he awoke to something moving around outside the living room door.

            He had had enough. Ghost, monster, lunatic in a suit; he reached out for the fireplace, grasping the ornamental yet extremely-heavy poker. He was going to _beat the shit out of it_ , whatever it was; he was going to leave it writhing on the floor in a broken pile of its own blood and bones. He stalked to the front door, and pulled it open-

            -James fell in, and Richard dropped the poker in shock.

            He was scratched, as if he had fallen into a patch of thorns, and as he pushed himself up weakly Richard dropped to his knees and slung an arm around him, helping him to his feet.

            “Ah,” James hissed, and Richard saw the already livid red marks that were undoubtedly going to leave him bruised.

            “What happened?” he asked sharply, and James pointed at the door.

            “Shut the door,” he whispered, and Richard led him into the front room, seating him on the sofa before running back to grab the poker and slam the door shut. “Where… where…”

            “Jeremy took the girls to Mindy’s mother’s,” Richard said quietly, and James stared at him, wide-eyed. “I didn’t have much choice, someone had to find you! It broke in, it had Willow…” He trailed off, breathing pained suddenly, and James stared at him in horror.

            “But… but it was out there…” he gasped, and then winced again. Richard looked at the livid red marks - like tiger stripes up James’ arms - and ran his hand through his hair, letting out a choked sob of panic. “Hammond, breathe. Just… ring Jeremy.”

            “He’s driving with my girls in the car. I’m not calling him,” Richard said fiercely, and James saw the tears in his eyes. “I’ll get you some painkillers or something and then… then tell me what happened, yeah?” He stormed into the kitchen, leaving James alone in the living room to examine his wounds, and returned a moment later, clutching a box of paracetamol and a glass of water, as well as a first aid box wedged clumsily under his arm. He ignored James’ grunt of discomfort at being touched and began to apply antiseptic cream to his wounds, focusing his full attention on fixing the situation that he felt was within his power to fix.

            James watched him in silence, muscles coiled to run.

            “What happened?” Richard prompted again, and James shook his head.

            “I was… in a forest…”

* * *

            _James turned around._

_It stood, watching him, from across the small clearing he found himself in, and he immediately stepped back, before feeling his breath catch in his lungs again._

_He doubled over to cough - it was more than coughing though; it was as if the air had lodged in his lungs, and as he inhaled, desperately trying to catch breathe, suddenly it was in front of him._

_Something - something cold and smooth and terrifying - wrapped around his wrist, and he pulled away from the creature’s hand - that wasn’t a hand. It was dark as shadows and immediately lashed him backwards, sending him sprawling. He made it to his feet just in time to see the creature send out another feeler, and then the world went black._

* * *

            “...then I woke up and I was… lying face-down on your driveway,” James confessed. There was silence as Richard stared at him, still clutching his arm.

            “Tentacles,” he said flatly, and James nodded, pulling his arm back to the safety of his own personal bubble. “You say it had tentacles?”

            “I don’t know! That’s… the closest thing I could describe them as, yes,” James said, voice faltering. “Please, Hammond. You have to believe me.”

            “Tonight is literally the weirdest moment of my life, and I woke up with amnesia once,” Richard said balefully, and handed the antiseptic cream to James. “I-” His phone rang, and he snatched it out of his pocket.

            “ _Hammond?_ ”

            “Jeremy,” Richard exhaled sharply. “Is everything okay, are the kids…?”

            “ _Hammond, we’re here. Mrs… ah, Etheridge wants to speak to you._ ” Richard relaxed, and the voice of Mindy’s mother came on the phone.

            “ _Richard_?”

            “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and there was silence for a moment.

            “ _Where’s my daughter?_ ” He heard Izzy say something in the background. “ _Richard…?_ ”

            “Please, I’ll pick them up soon. Izzy will explain everything,” he pleaded, and then suddenly Jeremy was back on the phone.

            “ _She didn’t look pleased_.” There was the sound of a car door slamming. “ _Is James back?_ ”

            “It attacked him. In the woods. Get back as quick as you can,” Hammond murmured, and there was the sound of a car revving into life just before the phone hung up. He collapsed onto the sofa again, and James watched him, fingers running over the red marks on his arm subconsciously.

            “They’re safe now, right?” he asked quietly.

* * *

             There was silence as Richard woke up slowly, golden morning sun sending a soft glow through his eyelids. There was a clinking noise from the kitchen, distant chatter and music, and he breathed out gently, not yet opening his eyes. A dream; a dream was all it had been. His daughters were fighting in the kitchen, Mindy would be working on her column sat at the kitchen table, and all would be well.

            He sat up, the duvet sliding to pool around his legs, and James stood in the doorway to the hall.

            “You’re awake,” he said quietly, and Richard felt his heart sink. Or… not… “We made breakfast, and we’re going to start watching the tapes in about half an hour.” He waved a spatula at Richard. “We thought we’d let you sleep in. Izzy rang before, to say they were both alright.”

            “I’m ringing the hospital,” Richard said quietly, and James nodded. “Did anything happen during the night?” He ran a hand through his hair again, then rubbed his eyes. “Apart from the obvious.”

            “No,” James said quietly, and Richard saw again the red, pained-looking tigerstripes that… something had left on him. Maybe the tapes would provide an answer. He hoped.


	11. Chapter 11

            An hour later, and the trio had eaten, Jeremy as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks, James and Richard with much less enthusiasm. They were now perched on the couch in total silence, trying to put off playing the tapes for as long as they could, fearful of what they might see.

            “I’ve got a pen and paper,” James said quietly, and Richard nodded, staring at the dark screen that flickered at the edge. It was almost nostalgic; his daughters watched DVDs with crisp, digital clarity, but he had grown up with this analog flickering and static. His daughters… he put his hands to his face, and then shook his head, taking a deep breath as James looked sideways at him.

            “I guess we’d… better get on with it,” he said weakly, and picked up the remote in one hand. It seemed slightly too heavy.

            The first tape was a bust, as was the second one; they were both footage of the set, footage taken of themselves that they weren’t aware of, they didn’t remember. Richard glancing in a mirror, muttering about his hair; James dropping a piece of paper on the floor and swearing. Jeremy’s disembodied voice, once or twice casually explaining about the camera. Moments that had completely slipped their memory in their triviality.

            “This was about halfway through the series,” Jeremy said, breaking the silence. Richard jumped, not expecting it. “Where we got the new Jag 4x4.” The other two remained silent, and then the tape stopped playing. “Are none of them dated?”

            “No, just blank,” Richard sighed, and Jeremy groaned. “Hey, it’s your fault, mate!”

            “Stop being insufferable and put the next tape on,” Jeremy sighed, and snatched the remote, pressing play.

            _Irritable?_ James wrote down on the pad of paper.

            This tape was a little more unusual. It began in the middle of Jeremy ranting about something to Andy and Tiff, who Richard remembered had dropped in halfway through the series to watch a day’s filming. There was the normal sound of mugs clinking; they must’ve been in the café, sat at a table.

            “ _...bloody tapes last all of six hours, it’s bloody useless when your work day’s as **shitty** as ours…_” he was complaining, when the image rolled wildly. When it had recentered, Jeremy was pointing it at James, who had clearly just walked in from the rain, with his hair wild. “ _James, were you hit by lightning?_ ”

            “ _No, you total arse_ ,” James replied moodily.

            “ _Pity_ ,” Jeremy said, and then the camera rolled again as James snatched at the camera. “ _Hey!_ ”

            “ _Put that fucking thing down!_ ” James snapped from offscreen, then the image paused as Jeremy put the controller down sharply.

            Richard raised an eye as he glanced over at James, who looked distinctly uncomfortable. So did Jeremy. He raised an eyebrow, and James shook his head.

            “No, I don’t remember that,” he said quietly. “I’m… sorry, Jezza.” Jeremy shook his head, looking at his feet.

            “Let’s not forget, I did try to shoot you both. I think we’re even for the machete incident,” he said quietly. James nodded, and then Jeremy pressed play once more.

* * *

             _“Put that fucking thing down!” James snapped, and Jeremy snatched the camera back. “You’ve been carting it round for weeks, what’s **wrong** with you?”_

   _“I don’t know **what** you mean,” Jeremy snarled, standing up, and James made another, more half-hearted attempt to snatch the camera from him. “What are you doing?!”_

_“What’s even on this?” James asked, his voice now sullen rather than enraged. “What the hell are you filming, Jeremy?” Jeremy snatched the camera away, before sitting back down to resume the conversation. “Oh, whatever, you **child**.”_

_As he walked away again, the camera image roiled madly, and Jeremy shook it._

_“What have you done to him now?” Andy asked, voice mild, as he stared after James._

_“Not a bloody clue,” Jeremy muttered._

* * *

             “Well, the camera went funny when you appeared,” Richard said, finally, and James nodded, scrawling that down on the paper as well.

             “It was probably the static from his hair,” Jeremy said quietly, and there was a moment when Richard and James just stared at him, and then Richard began to laugh, slightly hysterically at first, and then finally so hard he was crying, then James started with his goose-honk of a laugh, and then finally all three of them were just laughing and laughing to the point where James had gone bright red and Jeremy was wheezing and Richard wasn’t sure he knew how to breathe in any more. 

            “I… I… you people,” James spluttered, gripping onto the arm of the chair. “What’s wrong with us?” Jeremy shook his head, and wiped his eyes.

            “I missed this. I missed this so much,” he said quietly. “I just… I wanted you both to be safe. Please tell me you understand.” The mood had changed back again, but this time it was a little lighter. The others nodded, and then Richard stood up.

            “I’m going to get a beer. We’re all going to watch this with a beer, or I’m… I might go mad,” he admitted, and Jeremy nodded. “I need this to be as normal as we can make it.”

* * *

             Six hours later, and it was almost tea-time, with the hot summer sun arcing towards the horizon, and nothing else had turned up on the tapes. They were using Richard’s tactic of fast-forwarding until something interesting happened, and so far, there had been hours of… nothing. There had been a five minute argument about a shape in the background that turned out to be a stop sign, but nothing since, and their eyes were collectively beginning to hurt.

            “I think we should get a takeaway,” James suggested, and Jeremy nodded.

            “I think we need to go back to the house,” he said, and Richard looked at him in surprise. “I want to see if there’s anything in there. I had a number of cameras set up around the house, something might’ve…”

            “They’re gone,” James said quietly, staring out of the window, then he looked back at the other two. “Uh, they were those melted lumps of plastic, I’ll wager.” Jeremy winced, and Richard sighed. “I vote we go during the day. Although… that didn’t seem to help last time.” They all nodded, each wincing, and then Richard clapped Jeremy on the back.

            “At least this time you won’t be shooting at us,” he said earnestly. “And I might not electrocute my hand again.” Jeremy clapped a hand to his mouth, and Richard shook his head. “Did you forget that too?”

            “I didn’t know,” Jeremy said quietly, through his fingers. “Oh god, I didn’t know.” There was a moment of silence, and then he shook his head and just like that, was Jeremy again. “Right. Tomorrow, we go back to the house, and we take a look around. I need to grab anything left in there. Richard, can I sleep here?” Richard nodded. “James, are you going home?”

            “Not likely,” James snorted. “Last time I went home… well.” He put his hand to his head, and his eyes went a little blank for a moment, until he blinked and then came back to planet Earth. “Can you put us up, Hammond?”

            “No problem,” Richard said quietly. He’d be glad of the company.

* * *

             The next day, Richard was the first awake, and was shovelling Shredded Wheat into his mouth when he heard the sound of something coming through the letterbox. Wandering to the door, he picked up the brown package that rested on his ‘Welcome’ mat, and seeing that it had his name and nothing else on it, ripped it open.

            His shouting woke up Clarkson, who in turn woke up James by bursting into his room holding a poker and shouting. When the two of them got downstairs, Richard was holding a video tape and waving it around enthusiastically whilst continuing to exclaim about what he held.

            “Someone must know!” he said excitedly, and Clarkson took it from him, turning it around in his hands. “Someone sent it, look, it’s got my name on and everything…”

            “We’ll watch it when we get back from my house,” Jeremy said, placing it on the table. “Come on, I want to get this over and done with.” Richard opened his mouth to argue, and then relented, giving the tape a final glance as he moved to grab his keys.


	12. Chapter 12

“Who let _you_ drive?”

“It’s my car, ergo I’m driving it. As if I’d let either of you two touch my car…”

“Will you stop arguing and just look at the bloody road?!”

Tempers had become somewhat frayed as they drove to Jeremy’s, and even though they were almost there Richard was regretting insisting they all stayed in one car. As it was, James had sulked over being made to sit in the back, and Jeremy was attempting to crush James’ legs with the seat placement. Occasionally the thought flashed through Richard’s head that it was totally surreal that everything seemed so _normal_ when his children had been driven halfway up the country and his wife was in the hospital…

“What was that…?!”

James had twisted to stare out of the back window of the car, eyes wide.

Richard’s eyes went to the rear-view mirror. Nothing as far as he could see along the road, but James had gone white and he knew automatically what he was going to say.

“It was the tall guy, right?” Jeremy said, face ashen as well, and Richard pulled into Jeremy’s driveway. “Oh god, he’s following us…”

“Jeremy, let’s just focus on this. If we see him, we’ll… I don’t know, hit him with something,” Richard said frankly. “I’m more scared of what you’ve booby-trapped in your house.”

The agreement was quickly reached; James would look upstairs, Jeremy downstairs, Richard in the outhouses for anything that was important. They were to keep an eye on the windows; Richard and James had not told Jeremy about the time skip, but each was concerned that whatever had happened would happen again.

“We meet back here at three at the latest. Synchronise watches, chaps,” James said quietly. They did so, and then Jeremy and James headed for the door, whilst Richard disappeared around the side of the house.

* * *

James found himself in the kitchen, which was much the same as the last time he had been in there. The fridge was, mercifully, closed, and he elected against opening it again. Instead, he raised the tiny flashlight Richard had dug out of his shed for him, and shone it around the room that still seemed unreasonably gloomy, even at midday.

His eyes were drawn to the melted lump of plastic on the side, under the remains of the shelf. Picking it up, he looked at it, and then turned, putting his back to the shelf. Bending his legs slightly - there was a crack, to remind him that he wasn’t as young as he used to be and not to get any funny ideas - he aligned his head roughly with where the camera would’ve been filming, before walking in the straight line to the window and looking out over the garden to a blue shed.

Nothing… but he’d get Richard to check it out, just in case, whenever he made it round there.

He picked up the lump of plastic, throwing it up and down in one hand thoughtfully as he failed to notice the shadow pass by the window.

* * *

Jeremy walked into his bedroom, and as his eyes ran over the sea-blue bedsheets Francie had picked out a few months ago, every mildew spot that now clung to it, the way it lay, rumpled, as though somebody had just gotten out of it… he took a deep breath in, and then collapsed to the floor, tears suddenly flooding from his eyes. He swore the tears had not been there a few seconds ago.

This wasn’t good. His friends couldn’t see him break down like this. He took a deep breath in and stood up, only to find himself staggering over to the bed and collapsing on it, still weeping, sinking his head into his hands as if to stem the flow. He stayed like that for a long time, breathing in jerkily as sobs ripped themselves from his face, and then bit his lip so hard he could taste blood.

“Ow,” he hissed, but it did the job; his tears slowly trickled to a stop, and then he sat up, and let out all his breath in one huge, shaking _whoosh_ of air that made him feel somehow better.

He was sure he had had a camera in here, atop a shelf or on a cupboard; maybe it had been melted, as James had said. He cast an eye around, and tried to remember.

Oh god, why was it so hard to remember?

* * *

Hammond stood out in the sunlight, and took a deep breath in. The garden smelt of, well, gardens; wild growing grass and flowers and none of the hideous, entrenched _rot_ of the inside of the house. He sucked in another deep breath, and then put a hand to his head.

Okay, so that window led to the kitchen. Empty; James must’ve chosen to look elsewhere first. There didn’t seem to be anything of immediate interest - he wasn’t even sure what he was expecting to find. His eyes were drawn to the treeline almost against his will; he glanced up and let his eyes run across the tops of the trees against the deep blue sky. The contrast somehow soothed him a little in a way he couldn’t describe.

 _It lives in the trees_.

The thought arrived from nowhere, and he sat down suddenly on the grass with the surprise of it. He had had another thought like that, hadn’t he, looking out across the fishpond… something about lakes. _Lakes in stillness will take every life of the night_.

He breathed in, and lay back on the grass. Maybe what he was searching for wasn’t out here. Maybe it was somewhere in his head.

God, he hoped nobody had heard him think that sentence. He sounded like a hippy.

He closed his eyes, and put his hands over his face.

When he removed them again, it was dark.

He sat up, eyes wide, and fumbled for his phone.

 _21:39_. Sixteen missed calls, three from James’ phone, the other thirteen from Jeremy’s. He scrambled to his feet, looking around. But… but… it’d been barely midday when they’d arrived. Nine hours?

He sprinted around the side of the house, only to bump into Jeremy, who grasped his wrists and had bared his teeth in a snarl before realising it was him.

“Hammond?!” He didn’t even wait for an answer, dragging him around the corner to the front of the house and into the light of a streetlamp. “I can’t find James,” he gasped, and Richard stared at him a little more. “Where _were_ you?!”

“I was in the garden! I shut my eyes for a second and then when I opened them again it was dark!” Now it was Jeremy’s turn to stare at him. “I… it was just a second ago.”

“Hammond, you’ve been gone for nine hours,” Jeremy said slowly. “Did you… did you fall asleep on the grass?” Hammond shook his head violently, and Jeremy held up a tape. “I found this. Let’s find May and get the hell out of here before…”

“Wait a minute. Didn’t you come outside to look for me?” Richard asked sharply, and Clarkson raised an eyebrow. “I mean, surely the instant I didn’t turn up, you’d have looked outside and seen me on the grass. Right?”

“Where do you think I sent James?” Jeremy muttered. “Come _on_!”


End file.
